ANOTHER rainy day

Spent the afternoon yesterday buttoning up the open summer ventilation holes-again. Honey is growing and has developed a real bark-not a puppy bark anymore. She is also growing up. Tuesday we had a great leash lesson, Wednesday was jumping and biting the leash. No lesson today-too wet. We are going to try for two good days in a row.

The New Yorker double fiction issue came and I was anxious to read E. Annie Proulx's short story "Tits Up in a Ditch." Her recent fiction is all Wyoming-but has progressed from Novia Scotia (The Shipping News) Louisiana (Accordion Dreams) Texas (That Old Ace in the Hole) to Wyoming (Brokeback Mountain and several others) She may have to move after "Tits Up." She nails it: the barrennness of rural life in every way- intellectually, emotionally, attitudinally and the complete complacency: "Wyoming is just fine the way it is," enduring resistance to even putting a stoplight at a dangerous intersection, loveless marriages, broken down cowboys, long suffering women, dead children, the Iraq invasion. I was throughly depressed and filled with admiration for what she had written.

Strangely, it was just what I needed to read: reinforcing to my reclusiveness- and my being a sparing participant in an environment that must be sipped-or it will overcome you. Why do I stay? Because it is no different anywhere else in America-the scenery is different- the distractions from barrenness more prevalent. This is an honest place to be a hermit. You are half-way there at the get-go.