Along with the plum blossoms, the first flurries of applications are arriving!

       There’s nothing quite like the smell of fresh applications in the morning, still warm from the friction of electron-transmission.
       Though, to be sure, paper and snail-mail are perfectly acceptable and have their own appeal. The satisfying rip of the envelope flap to extract the clipped packet, the  flutter of pages, the slant of penmanship,the size of text and font.
     Whatever the method, the applications all make one promise: writers gathering the last week of July under the Napa sky, (fogged over or bright with sun), to hone their craft, talk shop, write, listen, write some more.