DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. 
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First up this week: Aught … 
Not what I would have guessed. Although I knew, were I dredging my memory. Lazy thinking is so easy in the heat. Merriam-Webster: "1. Scottish : ownership, possession <I am as weel worth looking at as ony book in your aught — Sir Walter Scott>"
That Sir Walter Scott quotation is curious, isn't it? Ought I to look, as suggested? I'd have to look carefully. I don't recall seeing any Scott books (or images of the man) in my library. My aught mayn't contain much Scott. Oh, I've read Ivanhoe. But I don't think I'm holding a copy for comparison with aught. Nothing within or withaught. Nothing to see here.

Second up this week, Alackaday …
It's too darn hot -- alackaday. I'm expressing some sorrow here. Too darn hot. Yes, I know, it's summer and we're heat-waving. But, still, I'd prefer a milder coastal clime. Alackaday sounds like I'm declaiming something Shakespearean, but I think the word came into use after Will was gone from this warming globe. My man-cave office-shed in the back garden isn't conditioned space. Thus, I keyboard in less than perfect conditions. Although, at this moment, I seem to have found my way into a rather comfy chair where I can pull one of my several (don't ask) computers close. So, less alackaday than could be. Plus, the main house has air conditioning. I lack for nothing today.

Third up this week, Adieu …
Farewell, and nicer than good-bye. Yes, they mean the same, probably with some of the same word origins. And adieu may sound like I'm Frenchifying and putting on airs. But the word was adopted into English usage rather a long time ago. "Middle English, borrowed from Anglo-French a deu, a dieu, literally, "to God." First Known Use: 14th century" (Merriam-Webster). I don't think I'm actually adieuing (going away), but I am writing this letter on the early side. I've a busy week ahead. I have a moment now (multiple moments). And I write. Mostly I read and write, and watch British TV mysteries. What a world, what a world. 

A sweet novella ...
Foster, by Claire Keegan
I recently read that we were in the year of the short book. Well, this one is fewer than 100 pages. It's a sweet, elegiac, sort-of coming of age tale. "A hot summer and a young, unnamed girl is taken to stay with an unfamiliar couple on a Wexford farm while at home her reluctantly pregnant mother makes ready for yet another mouth to feed … This is a story about liminal spaces: about having "room, and time to think", about the shifting lines between secrecy and shame, and a child's burgeoning apprehension of the gap between what must be explicit and what need merely be implied." (Chris Ross review in The Guardian 8 Oct 2010)

And a bit more … 

"Summer"
by Louise Gluck

Remember the days of our first happiness,
how strong we were, how dazed by passion,
lying all day, then all night in the narrow bed,
sleeping there, eating there too: it was summer,
it seemed everything had ripened
at once. And so hot we lay completely uncovered.
Sometimes the wind rose; a willow brushed the window.

But we were lost in a way, didn't you feel that?
The bed was like a raft; I felt us drifting
far from our natures, toward a place where we'd discover nothing.
First the sun, then the moon, in fragments,
stone through the willow.
Things anyone could see.

Then the circles closed. Slowly the nights grew cool;
the pendant leaves of the willow
yellowed and fell. And in each of us began
a deep isolation, though we never spoke of this,
of the absence of regret.
We were artists again, my husband.
We could resume the journey.


And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's "Sometimes"