Phoebe was flirting with the butterflies as they sat atop the fallen figs, feasting. Four red-spotted purples, at right angles to each other, forming a black, artificial flower, opening and closing their blue-tipped wings in a silent dance. Phoebe watched, then she extended her pretty white paw to touch, and one by one the butterflies flew away.

The sixtieth anniversary of Hirsoshima. All nuclear weapons and energy technology must be resisted! If only because the waste can't be disposd of safely for thousands and thousands of years. Not to mention the dangers of possession by nation states (including ours) and international revolutionaries.

Down here nearby the Savannah River Plant, summer is progressing apace. Earlier in the summer, we had a bobwhite and a whippoorwill singing morning and evening. We've had two great blue heron sightings: in both cases we saw him (her) flying out of the top of a tall tree, leading us to believe that he (she) nests in the trees and comes down to the creek to feed.

I have a little square turquoise ceramic ashtray I inherited from my mother. It sits on a table by the sliding glass door in our bedroom. I walked into the bedroom the other day to find a green anole resting on it, completely still, looking just like a majolica sculpture.

Out west, meantime, our Emma is learning to smile. She smiled at me several times when I was last there, when she was just a baby of five weeks old. Now that she's a grown-up eight weeks old, her parents tell me she's smiling a lot. She's also talking on the phone. She definitely said hi to me the other day. She's trying to get her hand to her mouth. She can see it out there, but she doesn't know how to make it come to her. Sometimes it arrives unexpectedly. Then she's happy. But then it goes away just as unexpectedly and she wants it back. Very frustrating.

Enjoy the heat. It will be gone soon enough.