The land is an ark, full of things waiting.
Underfoot it goes temporary and soft, tracks
filling with water as the foot is raised.
The fields, sodden, go free of plans.
                 -- Wendell Berry, "A Wet Time"

Today was "Flood Sunday" in the Lutheran lectionary. The gospel reading was the one in which Jesus, wakened by his fearful disciples, rebukes the storm. We sang "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," a prayer which asks protection "for those in peril on the sea." The pastor explained that this Sunday is one of remembrance and celebration for congregations in the seafaring towns of New England, where few families are untouched by a loss to the water.

I live along an inland waterway in central Pennsylvania, but these days it seems we should be looking into ark design and determining how the dimenions of a cubit might translate into modern expression. On Friday the newspaper reported that it has rained on 63 of the last 93 days.

I did see some blue sky this evening as I returned from the grocery store. The wind died down and Ron was able to enjoy a few hours of model airplane flying. Lynn's been working at a walk-away ice cream stand beside a driving range and miniature golf course. She's hoping that a turn in the weather will mean brisker traffic and more tips. 

She's been out of school two weeks now, long enough, I told her, to have recovered from what was a very stressful semester emotionally. She's begun her preparation for senior year. For AP English she has to complete two books (she's chosen Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents) and an essay on her reading and writing process before she leaves for her trip to Atlanta for the Lutheran youth assembly. She's leaving Oedipus Rex until after hockey camp in August.

And I've begun my summer as well. As of today I have forty days and forty nights to get ready for my August Gallivanting. On August 3 I'm going to Nimrod Hall, an artists' colony in Virgina, for a week's private writing retreat. There will be some contact with other writers and some time devoted to workshop, but I'm expecting to spend most of my time in uninterrupted periods of writing away from the distractions of home and family.

And then (this is the really big news), I'm going to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont, ten days of craft classes, lectures, critique sessions, and networking. Rebecca Mead, in an article in the New Yorker, has described Bread Loaf as "America's most competetive literary conference." Getting into this for somebody like me is like getting into Yale for Lynn and her friends. I've been admitted as a general participant, the next-to-the-bottom rung of the Bread Loaf hierarchy (auditors, who don't bring their own work but merely listen and learn, are the bottom). And among participants I am in the bottom tier of that group as well, what Rebecca Mead describes as "the middle-aged historical novelists with grown children and supportive husbands," as opposed to the up-and-coming (and much younger than I) MFA grads who get work-study waiterships (read an on-line journal of one such person's experience last year), and the writing program instructors, some of whom already have a title or two on store shelves, who get fellowships.

But I'm in. And I have work to do to get ready.