A new month has commenced! March, the weather forecasters predicted, would come in like a lion.
From “Katy and the Big Snow” by Virginia Lee Burton
They sure had everyone in a tizzy of expectation. Church was even called off yesterday! (The rector is in the holy land–is this what happens when the cat’s away?) In fact, most churches in the area canceled all services because of the expected 10″ of snow/sleet. Unheard of in the “olden” days! Can’t say that I wasn’t pleased to be able to stay in bed and read Olivier and Parrot by Peter Carey.
I also finished The Sweet-Shop Owner by Graham Swift, which was well-written and held my interest, but I can’t say I recommend it unless you are in the mood for a depressing story about post-WWII England.
But back to the weather and our snow-pocalypse that didn’t happen.
In fact, not much happened.
But Spring will be here before we know it! You know this is true.
Here’s evidence:
P.S. I did not watch the Oscars. I watched Serenity (2005) which was nominated for no Academy Awards (although 8 years later Chiwetel Ejiofor was nominated for Best Actor in 12 Years a Slave). However, it is a favorite of mine. I am a leaf on the wind…
I ventured out in my trusty college boots, but the snow was way over the rolled cuffs of my jeans and the wind was howling so I headed back inside.
I put away the rest of the Christmas decorations–back to the basement–and tidied up. A blizzard is a great time to get one’s house back in order.
I also responded to some new interest in my old blogpost on the Sand Creek Massacre. The comments section was blowing up! I heard from a Japanese-American who lived as a child in the Amache Internment Camp during WWII and also from a retired history teacher who lived in Lamar, Colorado. It is amazing how the internet connects people.
Blizzards are also excellent for encouraging reading without guilt. I finished re-reading Sackett by Louis L’Amour. L’Amour, you will recall, was the author of 89 novels, 14 short-story collections, and two full-length works of nonfiction and was considered “one of the world’s most popular writers” during his lifetime. A lot of what he wrote is not that great, but I like Hondo and Sackett. As I have said before, sometimes you are just not in the mood for great literature and need a good yarn.
“People who live in comfortable, settled towns with law-abiding citizens and a government to protect them, they never think of the men who came first, the ones who went through hell to build something.
“I tell you, ma’am, when my time comes to ride out, I want to see a school over there with a bell in the tower, and a church, and I want to see families dressed up of a Sunday, and a flag flying over there. And if I have to do it with a pistol, I’ll do it!”
Sackett–a man after my own heart.
Today, of course, is a snow day as there is no getting out of our driveway. Daughter #2 and I shall attempt to clear it. Onward and upward.
Well, as of Sunday, most of our leaves are off our trees
and on the ground.
Boy oh boy, are they all over the ground. We had quite a storm on Sunday morning. When I came out of church, the sky to the west was awesome.
It was a record-breaking 80-degrees and sunny, but the wind was whipping up. I said to the man next to me, “We better batten down the hatches!” and my friend Carlos, stepping outside, exclaimed, “Auntie Em! Auntie Em!” Indeed.
I hurried to my car and as I drove the 5-minute trip home, the leaves seemed to attack my car. It was bizarre. As I reached my garage, the raindrops started to fall. I rushed inside to get my camera and headed back out the front door. But the rain began in earnest and then the hail, so I quickly retreated back inside. It was an amazing storm with lots of wind and hail, but it was over in about 8 minutes. Then the sun came out and the storm moved on, picking up strength on its way to Illinois where the really bad business hit–including an EF4 tornado.
I spent most of the weekend recovering from last weekend in NYC and a busy week at home. I watched When Harry Met Sally, which as you know, is a classic Nora Ephron romcom shot in and around the city. You gotta love old Billy Crystal, especially in this scene:
I also watched Martin Scorsese’s documentary The Last Waltz (1978) which is a filmed account of the Band’s farewell concert appearance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976. The Band (Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, and Richard Manuel) were joined by a dozen special guests including Bob Dylan (they were his back-up band in the 1960s), Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and more. I was not cool enough back in the day to know about it, much less appreciate it, but I can now. It was really great and I highly recommend you watch it…perhaps on Thanksgiving! (I, of course, will be watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles.)
Van, Bob and Robbie
I also watched the new documentary about J.D. Salinger on Netflix Watch Instantly.
I watched the whole thing, but there was nothing new to me. They go into some detail about his horrible war experiences in WWII when he participated in the amphibious landing on D-Day and fought on through the Battle of the Bulge for over 200 days, including the horrendous Hurtgen Forest, and concluding in the liberation of Dachau. This is legit as it had a great effect on him. Who wouldn’t be affected by that? But mostly it is a lot of second and third-rate writers who are jealous and resentful making comments. Awful people like Gore Vidal. Why is it so hard to understand that a writer who is largely misunderstood wants to be left alone? It makes perfect sense to me. People have always had such ridiculous expectations of him. I guess it is all that unrequited love.
He was not crazy. (And neither was Holden!) Personally I think it speaks volumes that the local people of Cornish, New Hampshire closed ranks around him and protected him for all those years. They liked him. He went to the bean suppers at the Congregational Church. Also his friends, like Maxwell Perkins’ sister, protected him. It’s all the rest–the ones he wouldn’t talk to–who are so resentful. Who suggest he was pretty weird. I don’t think so.
I was talking to daughter #1 yesterday–I was at work and she was walking down Columbus Avenue on her way to work in New York City. It started to rain and she had to run. There were no toadstools to wait under.
AP photo
It was rainy as well in my flyover town, and I was reminded of this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882).
The Rainy Day
THE DAY is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
But you know, the sun always comes out again…and the tiger lilies are blooming!
Who can be sad for long when these wonderful flowers are blooming in our backyard and all along flyover byways?
It was quite a weekend. I took part in more socializing than in the first 5 months of the year combined.
A very dear friend and her husband were visiting from Virginia and we had dinner with them at a friend’s house with other members of our high school class–a mini reunion of sorts. There were tornado sirens and we turned on the TV during dinner to make sure we weren’t in the path of disaster. Luckily the tornadic activity passed by us to the north, but you can never be too sure. Unbenownst to us, there was a lot of local damage and power outages galore.
Oh my goodness.
On Saturday we went to my old man’s 40th high school reunion which was held at his bff’s house up on a bluff above the Mississippi River.
BFFs
Such a view!
There was a pig roast (sorry, no pictures) and lots of nostalgic ’70s music. Hello, Neil Young.
Martin and Cap check out those newfangled phone devices.
The boys shot off a cannon and there were fireworks.
On Sunday I went to church because I was reading the second lesson. It was one of those “as we have said before, so now I repeat…” exhortations that ol’ St. Paul is known for. Great stuff. My favorite to read. While we were passing the peace, the first lector said, “Good job,” to me. “As usual. We had the A-team today.” I chuckled, but I was pleased. I’ve never been on the A-team before. Boo yah.
I had brunch with my BFFs from Virginia and then went home to work in the yard a little before it rained. A lovely end to an exhausting but wonderful weekend.
#Oldfriends
Oh, this old world
Keeps spinning round
It’s a wonder tall trees
Ain’t layin’ down
There comes a time.
Spring is here. Last night we had our first severe weather of the season in our flyover state. “I heard this big ol’ boom,” said one victim telling her story to the ubiquitous reporters who swarmed the area after the debris settled. The weather teams were on high alert last night and much of the primetime TV schedule was pre-empted.
Unfortunately I had to go to the airport to pick up my husband last night who was returning from a conference in California. We made it home before it got bad. We literally pulled into the garage and went inside and it got dark and the rain came down. Phew. The worst of the storm went north of us.
I do love our mid-western weather, and, indeed, weather. But severe weather, not so much. No one was hurt last night and for that we are grateful.
In weather news the National Weather Service said 12.4 inches fell here on Sunday, beating the one-day record for St. Louis of 12.1 inches set one hundred years ago on March 24, 1912. Woohoo! The high Monday reached the mid 30s, compared with a high of 76 degrees a year ago on that date and 59 the normal high on March 25.
Yesterday I decided to venture forth into our flyover landscape which was draped in the fluffy white stuff. I decided that such an expedition warranted the wearing of my size 5 1/2 Fabiano hiking boots that I wore everyday when I was a junior at Williams College back in the day. They are one of the few things that still fits from my college days–haha! As you can imagine, I do not have many occasions to wear them anymore.
Tromping about in the snow is one of my favorite things to do, and there was much to see in the winter wonderland that is our yard.
This is a flower pot on the front porch:
I wonder how the birds are who live in this rhododendron bush?
This chair looks like it is upholstered in snow!
I guess these guys will have to wait a little longer to adorn the garden.
“You wake up on a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay there the evening before is no longer there–the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to take in last fall. All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on is not the snow of Narnia but the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls. The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence. It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow, too, that can make the heart beat faster when it catches you by surprise that way, before your defenses are up. It is snow that can awaken memories of things more wonderful than anything you ever knew or dreamed.”
― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
The dual personalities frolicking in the snow with their older brother circa 1964
Let it snow! We’ll be roasting here before you know it.
One of the best things about being the Boss Lady is that I get to call a snow day every once in awhile. Well, yesterday was one of those days. It wasn’t Snowmageddon, but for our flyover state it was significant white stuff.
We started with sleet in the morning.
And continued as snow throughout the day.
I hunkered down with my little home version of a potbelly stove:
I read more of The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather and munched on Valentine’s candy.
I watched Stagecoach on TCM.
Ringo: I used to be a good cowhand. But things happen.
Dallas: Yes. Things happen.
What a great movie! What a great day!
Unfortunately, although I called a snow day for our students today, I have to go in myself. C’est la vie!
dual personalities 