This piece will be of the "maintainer" variety -- that is, it is a collection of updates, news about what I've been doing instead of writing regularly -- in short, a piece of the "I had a pork chop for dinner" genre. (As I have said elsewhere, I am indebted to Mona Simpson's short story "Lawns" for the pork chop image -- I use it to mean a genuine diary entry that gives a rundown of the day, rather than the kind of shaped essay that I favor.)

The Silken Tent has been on-line for exactly four months now. One of the things I did tonight was update an early piece, "Annie and John."  It's about a love story from my husband's side of the family, and two things needed to be changed -- I had some facts wrong, and the pictures of Annie and John I included were not the ones that the piece referred to. In the process of fixing those errors I did a little re-writing -- in the months since I have been writing for an audience, however unknown and silent most of you are, my style has changed (for the better, I think), so I took this opportunity to smooth out some of the bumps. If you've read the piece before, you might like to see the new pictures. If you haven't, why not take a look -- it's a charming story.

I'm busier this week than I have been accustomed to -- we have Vacation Bible School this week, and I'm doing a presentation (the subject of tomorrow's essay, I've decided), so that takes care of the mornings. This afternoon we had a family funeral (where my husband passed out my URL to people who actually knew Annie and John, hence the need to get it right), and later I had a session with my summer enrichment student. All of these things, of course, are grist for my writing mill, but they will have to wait for tomorrow.

Thank you to all who read these pages. I cherish each reader, except possibly the ones who are looking for "sex in tents" or "naked pictures of that girl who keeps a webcam on in her bedroom all the time." (More about that later!)