We watched the DNC every night except Monday. I turned off the Clintons, that was just about all. I feel like they did a lot of damage with their globalization policies that benefitted Wall Street and allowed meta-corporations to get even larger.  I thought the Obamas were great, especially Michelle. And many of the speakers were really strong. Bringing out groups of people, mostly women, to talk about school shootings and abortion was moving.

The design of this convention was clever and exciting. Conventions had become rather boring, but this one was electrifying. We watched 90% of Tuesday, Wednesday and of course last night. When we got too tired/sleepy, I taped the rest of it and we watched it together in the morning while drinking coffee. It has given us both hope—especially important in Woody’s case, as he was very depressed, convinced trump would win.  He said the convention was the most fun to watch since u of M won the college championship last year.

I am back writing poems – as I closed in on the last changes to THE HOUR OF MY DEATH, I worked just about full time – aside from farm wife chores of processing what we grow as we bring it in.  The tomatoes have finally slowed down a bit but are still swamping us. Besides canning sauce and tomatoes – something we continued today—and freezing beans, Woody brought in leeks while thinning and continuing to hill them up in his garden. I’ll cook them this evening. I put that recipe in my book. I added recipes of my own scattered throughout. As well as poems, essays and poems throughout the narrative of the first year of my second life. It was absorbing to write and even more so to go through the 5 drafts revising it. Because I improvised first draft, just writing most days as the year unfolded, there were many repetitions, dull stretches, and insertions.

I finished WHAT THE BEARS KNOW and found it fascinating and moving. I learned a great deal about black bears. We don’t have bears here, but it makes a number of important points of living with wild life, as of which have a great deal. Deer, coywolves, possums, rabbits, foxes, woodrats, voles, moles, fisher cats, weasels, all the songbirds and crows and hawks and doves. All lived here before ius except coywolves and fisher cats who moved here recently with the rich people. Not that I mean they came together, but both started taking over around the same time.

This is a frantically busy time of year that the garden and its produce rules. I’m glad I managed to finish the 6th draft, but it did eat into my time in garden and kitchen. Now I’m trying to catch up. Pus, it’s the time when people come – summer people with houses vacant most of the year, poets from my previous workshops visiting, friends new and old, even people Woody interviewed on WOMR who want more of him. Labor Day is a celebration for us year-rounders since it means we can actually schedule appointments and get there, maybe get take-out of even eat in a restaurant, go to the beach, shop in town, go to events.

How often with friends you are about to spend an evening with, you want to avoid the fire pit and not fall in: the political fire pit, I mean. What subjects must you avoid to enjoy the evening? There are some friends where you’re safe with any subject, but just as many where you tread with caution. Maybe especially now.