Finn likes my heating pad almost as much as I do.
New manuscript, old manuscript, notes on both, laptop repository. It’s slow going. But at least it’s going. My consultant chisels here, there, making the form clearer, not unlike a sculptor working in stone. It’s pretty exciting, though also daunting because it turns out I don’t know jack shit about comma-usage.
The temperature is supposed to drop down to 29 degrees tonight. You’d be amazed at how many leaves are still in the trees.
Among the many upsetting manifestations of red wing lunacy and racism lately, today of all days it feels particularly awful that QAnon followers still gather in Dealey Plaza. People of a certain age remember exactly where they were when John F. Kennedy was shot. Where were you?
I was six (earlier I’d written eight! Fell asleep thinking wait, that’s not right). My mother was ironing and crying in front of the television. My brother’s birthday party was cancelled.
My brother is on a plane to LAX. It’s snowing here in Massachusetts. The power’s out in Georgia. Rainsluice is posting heartbreaking but 
Today: we will enjoy a fire. I have two chicken carcasses to make stock. I’m dreaming of a bean soup with sweet potatoes. Cilantro. A little heat. Mmmmm
I’m converting masks with cloth ties to masks with elastic (remember when elastic ordered online took three months to arrive?) Two ties ended up on the quilt above — they’re the orange and white fabric strips with a line of machine stitching on one edge. I like that quarantine energy found a way in. A friend on Instagram liked that I called the black fabric, “the moon ground.”
This was one of those pieces where I kept adding things and then rejecting the additions. Spare horizon and a disturbed sky with an indistinct shelter speak to the moment, I guess.
Deb was right. Voting was a surefire pick-me-up. Voting was in fact so exciting it overrode my usual reserve and I found myself reaching out to a fellow voter.
After depositing our ballots, fellow voter and I talked about — what else? — the weather. She loves the fall. I love the fall. She grew up in Cuba. I was born in Massachusetts. Summers are hotter here, she said. Ocean breezes making a difference.
And now it’s back to work. Postcards to Voters in Pennsylvania and editing the middle years (1740 to 1743).
