This Classic Toast post originally ran on September 10, 2013.

Day I

You open the first window. Now something is open that wasn't before. What else is opening that you don't know about?

In the Good Book, the good Lord told the disciples when they came to a town, if the town was deserving, to let their peace rest on it. And what were the disciples to do if the town wasn't deserving, girls and boys? They were to take their peace with them, to leave that place and shake the dust from their feet as a testimony against them.

This is George.
He lived in the forest.
He was very happy.
But he had one fault. He was too curious.
Now he is not happy. Now he has many faults.
What is your fault?
What will make you unhappy?

Previously: Spring has sprung. Each issue of Cook’s Illustrated begins with a folksy letter with news from down on the old Vermont farm by founder and editor-in-chief Chris Kimball. These charming, old-timey updates remind us all of a slower, simpler way of life, where neighbors stop to swap plowing tips out by the trading post and run when they see Old Henry coming. Who’s Old Henry? Why, what a question, stranger. Old Henry…

"Let's make sure that our bases will touch. I will touch your base to my base."

"Together, we will all circle back. The circle will be mandatory, and it will never end."

"At the end of the day, it is night, and we are alone in the dark."

"We have no skin in this game. All of our skin is elsewhere. There can be no skin in the Skinless Games under penalty of flaying."

You must be so tired! That day was your day. You went to Great Places! You went off and away! You had brains in your head. You had feet in your shoes. And you steered yourself In directions you'd choose. You went on your own. And you knew what you knew. And you were the one who would pick what to do. You walked up and down streets. Looked them over with care. Some you…

I have been accused, sometimes on this very site, of having an excessively morbid cast of mind, but you must admit that it is not my fault that this world is a breathing, pulsing carnival of roiling horrors. I did not invent ants. I am not responsible for them, nor for the fact that they occasionally join up in a twitching ball by seizing one another in their respective, wretched jaws and take to the sea as…

Come and knock on our door
We've been waiting for you

Once there was a tree and she loved a little boy. And everyday the boy would come and he would gather her leaves and make them into crowns and play king of the forest. He would climb up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples. And the apples stained his mouth a strange color and it wasn't green and it wasn't red and the stain wouldn't go away no matter how much…

Previously: Texts From William Carlos Williams.

this is just to say
i have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
but when i opened it again later
the plums were back
as if they had never left
only this time
they were
glowing slightly