While testing out this website’s new design for 2019, Google gave me the message that everyone hates to see: This site may be hacked. Luckily, I have a lot of systems in place to dig into the guts of a website’s code and find out when evil operators have inserted malicious code. First, I recommend signing up with Google’s Search Console & Verification service. They crawl your site and let you know when any problems are found. They were the ones who alerted me that I had a problem. On my site, which uses a WordPress framework, I ran a “high sensitivity” scan via the free version of WordFence. It found malicious code…

To hatch a crow, a black rainbow Bent in emptiness over emptiness But flying ― Ted Hughes photograph: “Flying Crow 2”, by Jo Naylor

“Your head is a living forest filled with songbirds.” ~ e.e. cummings

I am made of the pieces of my life that I remember… In ‘The Tempest’, Caliban says “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.” My greatest darkness is the detachment that I practice when I’m in distress. But when I’m detached, my writing and relationships suffer. So to be who I want to be, to write what I want to write, I must abandon what I’ve always used to protect myself. Welcome to paradox.

A 20-year-old orca, known as Tahlequah, gave birth to a female calf on July 24. The baby orca died only a few minutes later. Keeping the calf’s lifeless body afloat atop her head, Tahlequah swam through choppy seas for more than two weeks. *** HOW TO SWIM AN ELEGY by Craig van Rooyen This is a job for your barnacle-wrecked body. Grief, it turns out, is too much for the mind. It enervates the yellowed enamel of your ground-down molars; chafes at the skin sack separating your water from the world’s water. Keep your chin up. Not because the sympathy cards tell you to, but because the horizon’s gone, replaced…

A wonderful Charlotte Brontë quote: “I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities.”

One of the few poems I’ve committed to memory. Go figure. Jabberwocky By Lewis Carroll ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!…

Am I old enough yet? Sure hope so.