July 22, 2025

Modest weeding, the planting of a box of iris roots that arrived in the mail. 

GMC committee meeting last night. I was a monster of hurrying-things-along, cutting every corner I could in B’s magisterial delivery.  It takes him ten minutes to deliver four minutes’ worth of information. Drove TP home afterward, who has been covering by bus the entire city north to south to make these meetings. His excitement ran every direction, and one smiled without bothering to follow. His smell in the car was young and joyful.  

Quincy

 July 21, 2025

From email this morning: 

Dear David,

We are excited to tell you that your play Hancock Street has been selected to be part of our 2026 one act play series. The performance takes place at the Ruth Gordon Amphitheater. All performances produced by Friends of Ruth Gordon Amphitheater and Thalia Theater Troupe at the Ruth Gordon Amphitheater are free to the public.

As part of the inclusion, we are offering you $25.00 for the rights to perform the play and video it as we do all performances at the Amphitheater.

Please let us know your acceptance. When the 2026 schedule is set, we will notify you of the date and time. We hope you will be able to attend the performance. We expect the director will want to consult with you if they have any questions.

Thank you and congratulations!

Ann Danby

Founder, Thalia Theater Troupe

Managing Director, Friends of Ruth Gordon Amphitheater

Exhausting, joyful all day work on The Asheville Cantos. My voice is the great voice. Small poems are like gems that never quite find their place. There must be the necklace, the diadem. 

Hen

 July 20, 2025

Praiseworthy weeding in the bamboo garden. At one point I was weeding in one corner of the garden while a hen turkey and her brood (six chicks) foraged in another. My Facebook one-year-ago pop-up informed me that I took a photo of exactly the same thing one year before. 

 

July 19, 2025

Though I intended other things for the first of morning, I continued the labors of the night by cobbling a great poem out of minor ones. Be praised. Back in one saddle, at least. Heat and thunder. 

 July 17, 2025

DJ and I at lunch in Reynolds Village. I’m at the age when every restaurant portion is too much. Talked about the special treat when mom and I went to the Georgian Terrace in O’Neill’s for club sandwiches. Kids got a menus shaped like an elephant. Those club sandwiches were dainty. Those at the Village Porch were leviathans. Could barely haul myself into the van. 

On the night porch: Bart the black cat leapt up, sensed me, deliberated for a moment whether I were tolerable, then departed. I was disappointed. The balls of fluff (now taking up the tops of two columns) are sleeping wrens. I disturbed one a little, and he fluttered stupidly around until he found his perch again, groggy, or maybe night-blind. I guess the porch saves the energy it takes to cling to a twig; plus, against the roof, they are vulnerable to approach from only one side. As I turned to go inside, the shape of a bear loomed out of the gloom, making for the back garden. Unaccountably huge. I’m used to being amazed at the hugeness of bears, but this was at another level.

 

July 15, 2025

Images on the Internet of a flood in the 28th Street subway, which I took from the theater two weeks ago. 

Allons enfants de la Patrie

 

July 14, 2025

Heroic weeding in the roadside garden. Took the car to be inspected. It was fun listening to the guys at Valvoline calling to one another as they worked, blue collar opera. The guy who took my money said “You don’t drive this much, do you?” Then he offered to buy my car. Even had his offer been stunning I’d have to think of the bother involved in getting a new one.