home

I wake up to winter in Wisconsin. The warm spell is behind us, the light snow is cleaning up the landscape. We'll have some arctic days in the weeks ahead, but today feels, well, normal. Winter normal.

But I'm still thinking about Naples. Maybe it's because Neapolitan culture, habits, daily life, feel uniquely different from what I would find elsewhere in Europe, yet not so different that I can't find my bearings within it. So, different in many ways, but still familiar. You don't feel shut out -- they're too welcoming for that.

Increasingly, when I travel, between actually doing things, dashing around, and writing Ocean posts, I find myself having too little time to think. But that's okay, I catch up on everything once I am home. So today, I'm catching up on thinking.

And at the same time, I'm molding myself back into my sweet routines at home. Morning with the animals  while for once Ed can sleep in...

(where were you all these days?!!)

(where were you all these days?!)

And then breakfast together. We talk about the power of hateful speech and people's taste for reading such stuff, or at least about such stuff. And the importance of removing yourself from all of it so that you at least are not part of the enabling camp. Democracy, unfortunately, has to make room for vile content, but without listeners, without an audience, gossip, and especially negative opinions on the lives of others has no where to go.

There. We can get serious over oatmeal!

Snow. Not a ton of it -- this is no blizzard. Just a gentle light dusting over a small base. Enough to go skiing? Well why not!

I talk to the forest. I haven't had a good conversation yet this year. It's time.

And in the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop. 

This girl would like to just reread favorite things off the shelf.

But, it's time to nudge her toward new stuff. And I do. And she is mesmerized by the freshness of the story (the Penderwicks series -- just superb to read together!). The entire afternoon is spent on zipping through the chapters of it. Well, and eating tons of snacks. Some things never change.

In the evening I cook up a soup. Just because it is the absolutely perfect evening for it. I also suggest we watch the one movie from this year's Oscars that we can actually stream for free -- All Quiet on the Western Front. It's the kind of movie where if you begin it while having faith in humanity, you're liable to quickly loose it at the end. Uff! Two and a half hours of horror.

Still, the soup was good and the farmhouse was warm and it was so good to be home once more!

with love...