follow that qar!

My GENERATE day was cool and bright from morning to night, an adventure for edging ahead. Its true start was the bridge walk, a brisk excursion after the drive. My aim was to log a letterbox and I did. I also enjoyed a second fortuitous find, a sign left behind. Then I was off to the Andross entry. "Accidental collisions," Adam Burk said, and my note taking began. It was TEDxDirigo Sunday and I sat self-satisfied. The first talk was excellent: Voot Yin of MDIBL and Novo Biosciences Inc focused on tissue regeneration with ZF143 (ZF for zebra fish, which regrow a clipped tail at an astonishing rate; ZF143 for "a nontoxic drug that rescues defects in regeneration"). Might humans effectively regenerate damaged tissue with such a drug? That's what he hopes to find out. Along the way, I assume there'll be scads of "induced amputations" among sacrificial subjects: fishes, salamanders, and other lesser creatures. Three cheers for Alicia ...

His "How I became a poet" was the first catch. Whose definition, why someone writes? It's a wound that needs healing. Let a poem be itself. Ya gotta be smart enough to ask what it wants to do. (What is this about instructive direction?) Poems don't care. They have a loving nature. "You never get it right on the first draft." Size 14 shoes as a boy. Today he wears comfortably broken walking shoes. Then New Hampshire, now Maine. "Rains then quick thaws that so transform the world." He read The Abandonment and I thought of Stafford reading I Had a Brother. Giving form to the darkness. Who said "God damns every time he is asked"? It. On Water. And a pantoum. Name that poet.

Inside for the morning, we watched a kind neighbor snowthrow the mountain at the end of the driveway. That still left plenty for me. Nemo dropped an unprecedented single-storm snowfall, I'd say, at least for our 13 years here. Blowing and drifting make an estimate unwise, but I can't resist stating 25 inches.* I've seen taller piles once or twice, but this time we went from near-bare ground to waist-deep drifts overnight. It's hard to get shovel leverage with snow that high. 2+ days digging and there's still no route to the compost pile, or out the back door, for that matter. The weather station recorded only one gust above 30 mph, so no blizzard here, but it was nonetheless breezy. Sustained winds in the teens. 2/8 2118 29mph 44deg 2/8 2310 29 36 2/9 0249 28 37 2/9 0909 30 348 The weather station reported -3.1 temperature and -35 wind chill for 2pm on the 9th. Seems that has to be a glitch, but it was definitely cold and windy out there. Kept birds fed an...