summer 2026

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End of summer.

End of my friend Annie Dillard’s many, many wonderful days. “If this is my last note,” she messaged last spring, “don’t worry. You have work to do.” I didn’t know what she meant.

The photo at the top of the New York Times obituary isn’t her. That’s
a public face. She was always the woman of the second photo there: finding herself in observation—“meta-Ann,” she joked. (Her given name was Meta Ann.)