Friday

Well it's been a busy and weird week, but it's Friday.

The Oregon Book Awards finalists will be announced Monday.

I started Pastoralia by George Saunders the other night and I've been enjoying it.

Tomorrow Laura has a soccer game in Sandy. I think Max and Michael might go to the PSU football game tomorrow night. It's the last weekend of September - hard to believe.

Here's a Stafford poem for all of us tonight:

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot—air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

—William Stafford