April 21, 2026

Removed covers from the plants I covered last night against the frost, which apparently didn’t happen. Perhaps they felt looked-after regardless of the need. 

Coffee with TB at Riverside. T has no need for employment, which means he can spend all his time worrying about his writing and being a writer, which is the sadder because he is not good at it. He blames his failure at innumerable schools and with innumerable applications on everything but that. I finally had to stop writing him recommendations, having run out of ways to do so while at once telling the truth and attempting not to disadvantage him. How long can you hope someone has potential, and claim it for him without evidence? I thought that would end our relationship; apparently it did not, or only for a while. Affirmative action and DEI are his present enemies, excluding him as a straight white male in order to accommodate any number of less talented people of color. I do not doubt that this is an actual issue– I have faced it myself– but it's not helping to dwell on it to the extent he does. He’s getting his painful depression under control with a battery of self-prescribed botanicals, medical professionals having failed him. It’s the same litany from eight years back, and one feels equally helpless to be of assistance. Dogs came as we talked to me and not to him. I thought that meant something. 

The lamp my mother covered with tiles during her mosaic phase lit my desk at UNCA, and languished at riverside after my retirement until I rescued it yesterday and set it in my living room, lit again after nearly six years.

Peculiar anguish after AVLGMC meetings. I am doing no good. I am having no effect. When I was at Boy Scout Summer Camp, there’d come a time when we’d plan Skit Night. We’d decide on a funny little story, develop a script, think of songs we could perform, or adapt, to move the story along. We’d make costumes and find bowls to give us bosoms and somebody somehow would have a tube of lipstick. The more knowing among us would compose tiny Broadway shows for us to star in, everybody cooperating in the spirit of fun & comradery. On Family Night, when our parents came to visit, we’d put on the show. Though it wasn’t very good in any objective sense, we liked doing it and our audience liked witnessing it, taking exuberance and good fun as sufficient for a night’s entertainment. We were good because the people who wished us well wanted us to be good, and took our every effort as an actual achievement. What happy memories! I’m less comfortable with that process now. With the differences of better performances and a good deal more money, this is PRECISELY what happens with AVLGMC shows. (can’t really call them concerts) today, and there looks to be no deviation from that, or modification to it. What we did at camp was oh so relatable (to use Thomas’s word) but is to be relatable the only virtue we’re aiming for? Can we sometimes be challenging or transformative? Can we sometimes teach as well as satisfy? Could we exceed expectation as well as indulge it? Can we imagine that improving our range and skill as performers may, in some way, please and serve our audience?  Time grows short, and I have planned more than my share of Summer Camp Skit Nights.

Fretted over this until I realized how little it matters to the onward flow of things. It mattered in the moment.