Today–what I SHOULD be doing: taking down Christmas decorations and trying to fill in all of those blanks. It always looks so bare. But it is time. The fresh greens are no longer so fresh.
Today–what I AM doing: can’t seem to get away from my computer. Our son Tom is traveling in Croatia, and he sends daily reports and pix. I can’t just read and look, I have to know. So I have endless questions…about the history, mostly. And he dutifully replies (I’m sure he’s humoring a mother who still wants to know everything about everything he does.) So we’ve discussed Diocletian, types of plants growing on balconies in the winter time, reasons for building fortifications, religion, revolution (ah, those two often go together), building materials, nationalities of tourists..OK, you get the picture. He also does lovely streetscapes and sends those along, too. To a mother, fascinating stuff.
And then there’s email exchanges with my sister re: the lack of birds (having addressed that before, a continuing saga) and the fact that listeners to Jack Holcum’s show are lamenting the same thing. Last night’s dusting of snow wasn’t enough to bring them flocking to the feeder. But…Zut, alors, there’s a pileated woodpecker there right now!
And a friend who writes a weekly newletter about her garden and animals has just received a scholarship to a writers’ workship in San Francisco and wants to know which newsletters to send them. That requires my going back through years of great writings in my files. What fun that is on a cold winter’s day.
And I have a spring schedule to send out to about 60 volunteers at the Miller Center.
It’s noon and I’m not nearly finished with all of this. The Christmas tree still stands, and most like it will warm my heart when I sit down to gaze upon it again tonight.
And what I had really wanted to write about today was the Iowa caucuses…old news by the time most of you read this. So I’ll just add this simple thought: Why should a midwestern state of just over 3,000,000 people (smaller than many cities) carry so much weight in the political procedings of the country? Well, it is kind of refreshing to know that a great percentage of those people will head out in the dead of winter tonight to their local firehalls or Masonic lodges and actually stand and be counted in their choice of delegates for the party’s nominee. Democracy, a work in progress.
Happy new year, an election year, a summer Olympic year, the year of the realization of That’s What SHE Said, and hopefully a year of good fortune and happy times for all of you.
Ellen