Fairly tough day. Up 8, Spelling Bee, breakfast/coffee, read, like, 3 p. of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Struggled to start writing; worked noon-2, just inched along. Called dad about 2-3. Dealt w/ some domestic stuff (grocery orders etc.), but wasn’t able to do anything else worthwhile (e.g. read or listen to music) until 5:40, then helped make dinner w/ Bree; w/ eating and clean-up (stove), took ’til 8. Listened (during prep and dinner) to some Merle Travis, last night’s streaming set from the vanguard by Christian McBride’s New Jawn; closed with a Weather Report-era Wayne Shorter tune I dug. (I have never knowingly listened to Weather Report.) Practiced piano around 9. Also some Beethoven songs. Practiced piano w/ a bit more discipline than last couple days; scales, brief ear training, 7-th-chord “etude” around the circle of fourths w/ metronome; worked on “All The Things You Are” and “I’m Old Fashioned.” Took out trash, short walk per usual. Stayed up a bit, read the last 2 chapters of the Vienna Circle book. A note from Ernest Nagel, 1935: "Tell Carnap that Universities throughout the US are becoming more politically reactionary daily, and to exclude from his prospectus anything which some dumb conservative--who 'feel' these things--might regard as cultural Bolshevism." 2 JA poems. “What do you want, John? Informally,/a new body, and an assistant.” (The other, in prose, is “Die Miestersinger”; funny, as the opera came up in my MS a few days ago.) Crossword. Lights out after 11. Listening to an audiobook of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.