This afternoon, in a driving rainstorm that almost instantaneously altered to sunny skies, I took the girls with me to a staff meeting in Burlington. They read for a while, then headed down to the lake’s waterfront, and by the time I arrived, they had both decided Burlington was THE place to live.

On the way home, we stopped in at Big Box Store Land. With all our recent house guests, our towels have been revealed in all their deplorable condition. While I wandered around a mammoth store looking for towels in what had been advertised as a bath store, but had a sizable luggage department, too, the girls scoped out the premises.

They were truly amazed: hair clips could be bought in a plentiful pack and three dozen hairbrushes were on display. One daughter murmured, I’ve never seen so much shampoo in one place.

Such marvels! We left with towels and hair clips. Back at our house, in the cool and rain-fresh evening, we walked around the garden, the little girl noting the singing crickets, while the wood thrush trilled her inimitable melody. As summer winds down, the birdsongs gradually diminish.

The world of plastic baubles thoroughly admired, the girls and I sat on the couch and read.

(Donald Hall) is a writer who (at least on the best day) does not succumb to inner or outer pressure but, rather, knows that what he calls “absorbedness” is the answer–the only answer. Through all of life’s twists and turns–those fleas–he turns to the work the way his grandparents turned to the soil, to the harvest, which waits for no one.

– Dani Shapiro