I'm so sorry to hear that Celeste Rita Baker has died. It was my pleasure to publish her collection Back, Belly, and Side. "I reach!" she wrote. "On St. Thomas, Virgin Islands 'I reach' is one way of saying that you have arrived, you're at the door. So yes, I reach."

Seen today on a fence in Port Townsend.

Whenever the opportunity arises, I happily channel Lily Tomlin's Edith Ann, as I did on my recent trip to the sublime Neah Bay.

Am currently reading Niccolo Machiavelli's Discourse on the First Ten Books of Livy, a brilliant work of analysis that has much more to teach us about the US in 2025 than George Orwell's 1984 does. I do wish members of the US House and Senate would read it.

All it took was a single week of the new regime to provoke me into committing a particular kind of publishing act. Aqueduct will be releasing my new collection, Like Shards of Rainbow Frolicking in the Air, in June 2025. Two of its stories were on their year's Otherwise Award Honor List.

This seems a propos at this moment: "The attraction of certain kinds of explanation is overwhelming. At a given time the attraction of a certain kind of explanation is greater than you can conceive." Lectures on Aesthetics, III, 222. images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/com...

Big congratulations to LaToya Jordan: her novella To the Woman in the Pink Hat won the 2023 Shirley Jackson Award in the novella category!

This rock was made for perching. (Unless you're an anemone, in which it was made for clinging to.)

I've owned (& used) many typewriters in my lifetime. But I haven't used one since 1983. Apparently enough people in Port Townsend do use them to keep this shop in business. (They sell typewriters, ribbons, & do repair work.)

Joy of joys! I'm on sabbatical--writing. Not to mention that it's a perfect fall day here in Port Townsend today.