June 25, 2026
When I looked out back the last several mornings, at rabbit was grazing near the fence. Today I saw my fat groundhog and a feral cat (very spotted– an Appaloosa cat?) hanging out together. Fat boy did his best to get under the tool shed. Cat declined to follow, hid at the back. My protestations that I meant no harm went unheeded.
Errands. Big box to Goodwill. Weeding, dead-heading, bamboo severance
La Follia on repeat.
June 24, 2026
In email this morning:
Maddie Caldwell <mcaldwell@penguinrandomshouse.com>
Jun 23, 2026, 7:39 PM (15 hours ago)
to me
I hope this message finds you well.
My name is Maddie Caldwell, and I am an Executive Editor at Random House Books.
I recently came across your book, The One with the Beautiful Necklaces, and wanted to reach out personally. I was genuinely impressed by its mythic depth, lyrical style, and the way you bring the Appalachian setting and generational story to life.
I would be interested in learning more about your current writing projects and future plans, as well as whether you are currently represented by a literary agent.
If you do have representation, I would be happy to connect through your agent. If not, I would be pleased to share more about our publishing process and explore whether there may be a fit for future collaboration.
If you are open to a discussion, I would be glad to hear from you at your convenience.
Warm regards,
Maddie Caldwell
Executive Editor
Random House Books
After preparing and sending a thirty page enthusiastic response, determining that Ms Caldwell is real person, I allowed myself to realize how odd and unlike-the-universe it all was. I researched, sent another response, and received this in return:
Thank you for reaching out. We can confirm that what you've encountered is a scam. Mcaldwell@penguinrandomshouse.com is not a legitimate email address associated with our company or any of our employees.
I do recognize how hilarious this is to someone watching from outside. I don’t understand who profits from it and how, unless it is simply the glee of inflicting hurt. Congratulations– I swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
June 21, 2026
Solstice. Radiant beauty. Flowers in my garden like glowing coals. The day has been luxurious, ample, rolling out hour by hour like a golden cloth. For me, every day could be the summer solstice.
Weeding
Concert yesterday afternoon– if you can tell from the comments– a crowd-pleaser. People asked for copies of my poem, or said, “Who wrote that poem? I was trying to follow along, but it wasn’t familiar. . .” My obscurity is a judgment on the universe. Our director flubbed an entrance in the otherwise perfect Schubert. A conductor’s imperious “watch me!” should be wedded to expertise. Robert Shaw did wonderful things for choral music, but some of his practices, which can best be described as tics, became, somehow, honored standards. Not his fault, but that of his sycophants.
Mrs towhee flew to my very toe-tip to take a crap. Offering or contempt?
June 20, 2026
Stabs of red and black and golden calla out of the pervading green. Great mullein towering over. Last night’s concert was not “good” in the sense I usually use that word, but it was good fun, and our audience was delighted. My marriage poem was an unexpected hit. I was in the worse voice of recent times, and croaked my way through anything above the bass G. MS had to carry the part. Less pained and exhausted than in times past. Was it something as elementary as new shoes? One more time for that. On the health scene– I limped through Poland and Germany with a tender foot, and have been careful since. Today I realized it was not the End of Things but a plantar’s wart, and I got the instrument I bought long ago for the task and shaved off the top of the wart. So far, painless for the first time in months. My default setting is the belief that afflictions come without anything being able to be done about them, and then pass, magically, without anything having been done. That’s not wrong, but it’s right only about 60% of the time.
Obsessive playing of Handel’s “As Steals the Morn.”
June 19, 2026
Sweet cool breathy day. Last night was quite terrible, me wandering down the paths of fury and rebellion. Those paths are righteous paths, even when futile. That’s a way to wake exhausted.
Another way to wake exhausted is to have a dress rehearsal as bad as ours was. Of course everything goes awry at such a time, one expects it, but the flat fact is that we don’t know the music well enough to present it to an audience. Whole elements will not be seen or heard until first performance tonight, and we typically wait till dress rehearsal to address vital elements of performance and interpretation. Until this point we are drilled about fish mouth and final consonants to the exclusion of all else. Do I forget my fury from performance to performance, or am I just too habituated to go do something else? It’s not that we don’t have fun– we do. But we’re just not very good.
Bears in the news for greater and greater boldness. WJ had the windows torn out of his garage door.
June 18, 2026
My rictus of revision continues, a great slaughter of adverbs and helping verbs, by thousands of words reduced. My initial preference for the construction, “was working” over “worked” needs to be examined. I think I want to prolong action rather than freeze it in the minute, but that’s good only for one sentence in fifty. Like a poet, I pay attention to the music of a line. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it must be corrected. Also, the odd conviction that everything must be attributed to somebody in the story. I have to take out, “Sam saw Rhys walking out of the near woods” and replace it with “Rhys walked out of the near woods” about 100 times. But I finished, and wept as I was finishing.
June 17, 2026
Woke at 4 to complete prep for the colonoscopy. Reasonably sure that will never happen again. L a prince driving me and then waiting for the procedure to happen. Personnel at the clinic friendly and light-hearted, joking with each other in the corridor. Groggy– from the anesthesia? From the fuss and tedium of it all?
