"Agent Jeffrey's trained eyes rolled carefully around the room, taking in the sights and sounds."

While spending the weekend camping in the Chiricahua Mountains, the oldest and largest prickly pear in our yard bloomed:



Also, it broke 100°F -- the second earliest it has done so on record. Welcome to late spring.

By way of Not Thinking about all that, some links that recently came to my attention:

This year's Lyttle Lytton Contest winners.

The Genji reading companion, including chapter commentaries and comparisons of the Seidensticker & Tyler translations against each other and the original. The project seems to have stalled after 12 chapters, alas, but until then there's good and useful stuff in there.

Sonnet to a Clam by one John Godfrey Saxe.

---L.