After my diatribe against August in Texas, a reader in Dallas waxes poetic about summer: "To me, summer heat offers a bodily experience that's very visceral, an enlarging of every pore on your skin, the feeling of your metabolic processes at work, of producing all this sweat. I actually love to sweat. Your body becomes all the more corporeal and wondrous as you sweat. Still, I write to you from an air-conditioned room, saying all of this. But trust me, there's a physical loveliness to the heat."

OK, I'm trusting you. I am glad not to be there sweltering myself but I trust that you are a lovely and wondrous person and even more so at high temperatures.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I have recently begun sharing an efficiency apartment with a male roommate. He seems to be lacking most of the social graces. For example, he nonchalantly farts on a regular basis, with no regard for who may be present and without excusing himself. He also spits on the carpeted floor when smoking his pipe. I feel uncomfortable about mentioning my disdain for his behavior, as I generally do not discuss such topics and I am the one invading his space, being the new roommate. How may one delicately, yet clearly, address such a sensitive topic?

Civilized but Timid

Dear Civilized,

The delicate question is, Who was here first? Evidently, he was, and so your discomfort at his behavior is really your cue to look for another place. I don't think this is anything you need to discuss. The nonchalance of the farting to me is the crowning touch. A person who breaks wind freely, with no attempt to explain or apologize or conceal, is someone God meant to live alone. Give notice and look for a new abode. It was his parents' responsibility to bring him up and they failed and a roommate doesn't have the time or leverage to do the job.

Dear Mr. Blue,

A month ago I married a wonderful man, my high school sweetheart, in a small small, lovely ceremony (there were only 12 people there, including our parents and best friends). It was perfect, and exactly what we wanted and what we could afford. The only problem is my 81-year-old grandfather, who lives in another state and is in very poor health. He and my grandmother sent me a beautiful card and a check as a wedding present, and I wrote them a fairly long thank-you note. Last week I received a very hateful, hurtful and irrational letter from my grandfather in reply. He is very angry that I didn't invite him or the rest of the family to the wedding and he basically insulted me and my husband. He had a couple of strokes in the past few years, and is descending into angry senility. My husband wants me to confront him with his insults. But I love him, and I don't want him to think of me with this kind of anger and hostility. How should I reply to his letter?

Hurt Bride

Dear Hurt,

Irascibility is a fate that we old folks dread, along with being shuffled off into a warehouse and lying semisensible in a cinderblock cubicle and having to listen to treacly string arrangements of '60s pop. So forgive the sour old man. Don't confront him any more than you'd confront an old china vase. Wrap him in cotton batting. Send him a sweet apology and a note lauding the kindness of your new husband. You excluded your grandpa from your wedding and he was mightily irked and he fired his blunderbuss across the fields and let that be the end of it. His angry letter isn't the summation of how he feels about you, it's only an angry letter. Admire it as an example of the art and as his attempt to marshal his waning forces, and put it aside in the family archive, and don't worry about it.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"