Most of my decluttering these past couple weeks have been of snow on the deck, steps, and car. I even sprung to pay my up-the-hill neighbor's ex-husband to shovel the deck/steps after two of them. This one is only about 5" and comparatively light, so despite my sore shoulder, I'll do this one. And the car. My plow guy will be back later, but I may not go out late this afternoon to the movie at Portsmouth library, so he won't be able to do clean up until I leave for the Press Room tomorrow.

I HAVE reread my letters to and from author Robert H. Rimmer, mostly from the 1970s, and I'm adding significant dates to my personal digital calendar of my life -- I'm sort of reconstructing the ten years of my first marriage. I put a lot of that completely out of my mind. As a result, I'm realizing, I'd forgotten how many poems and other pieces of writing I had published and sold during that time period.

I chose to revisit those letters because they're fairly upbeat. I found that going through another binder of letters from 1969 to about 1980 was putting me into a fairly strange mental space. Maybe, having eased into it from the RHR letters, I can revisit those now with minimal effect from the bad memories.

Linn