October 3, 2025

Getting used to the security cameras. Trying not to obsess and look every 20 minutes. The backyard one sees ghosts– which is to say it detects a person and then shows none. I think it’s triggered by big moths close up, which is what I saw in the videos. The front camera is ill-placed, and a person, or a car, can come up the drive without being detected. You can get to the front door without being detected if you come from the east. But, at 2:30 this morning it caught a family of bears drinking from the cement basin on the front porch. My guess is that the cameras will reveal nightly bear visitations. I asked Zac my installer specifically if a bear would count as a “person” to the camera, and he assured me it would not. Glad he was wrong. 

Huge, irritating rehearsal last night. We’re not used to the numbers, and the social energy & chattering are hard to tame. We’re singing a song called “Pink Christmas”– against which I fought manfully but unsuccessfully– containing perhaps 40 uses of the word “pink.” After each and every goddamn one our director would stop and say “PinKKKK” to emphasize how much she wants a clown-like final consonant. The direction you repeat most often is the direction which is wrong, and you know it’s wrong because you have to repeat it. So old, and yet not all my rough edges worn off.

Monteverdi playing from the computer. He played while I was trying to work while the solar guys messed about in the attic. Wonder what they thought.

First female Archbishop of Canterbury.