by the light

My hands are raw from some cleanser or other. Figures: Sunday is cleaning day.

I finish polishing the condo. We move on to the farm house.

It is such a beautiful day!





So this is it? Home until some time in the future when it is home no more? I watch Ed greet his cat as we drive up. Man and cat.










Then, very quickly, we turn our attention to the farmhouse. (And I have to say, this may well be the most flattering photo ever taken of it.)





Ed returns to the task of dismantling the chimney...





.... I take the vacuum to the second wave of bugs that lethargically crawl out when the weather turns warmer. And another bunch, and then another. How many hundreds winter the weather in this way anyway?

Ed is tired, but the chimney demolition is almost done. We then count light switches in need of repair and I throw ads onto Craigslist for anything that someone may still find useful.

The afternoon hours move forward. I work on classes in a room that has never ending sunshine.

And quite suddenly it is evening. Ready to head back to the condo? – I ask. Ed is worn out, I can tell. Too many bricks to dismantle and throw out onto the melting snow outside.

While he showers, I take a walk down the road. Around the bend, I so often come across deer. Yes, tonight as well. One crosses the road quickly, too fast for me to take note.

Around us, the fields are picking up the hues of a setting sun. I am full of smiles. This is my backyard now. This is my block, my neighborhood.










I take a walk up the road, around the bend, just a few steps more...





The sky fills with the color of a pre-spring evening. Oh! I see a deer come out of a forest. And another! I watch, even as they are mere specks in the open fields.





More come out. Four. Then five. Then seven.

I could come closer, but why should I. Right now I am the intruder. They live here. I’m only getting ready to do so.

One minute the sky is grand, the next minute it is grander still. My road (yes, my road!) snakes up and then down... so different from an urban or even suburban landscape!





We drive back to the city and I throw one last look back at the farmette. Easy to spot, to admire. The sun is gone, but the silo stands out. And the farmhouse. It’s behind the thicket, right close to the silo.





It could be that the years, the very first three of my life, spent in the countryside of Poland, have left their imprint. This place of quiet fields and blazing sunsets sure feels like home.

making plans

It’s curious when the change happens: when you see yourself as belonging to the category of people who are thinking out loud about retirement. Yes, of course, it could be that I will be a very late retiree. It could be that I’ll never see retirement at all. Things happen. Bodies fail suddenly, savings strategies collapse. And, I quite like my work, so there’s that to consider.

Still, as more and more people around me plunge into retirement including, of course, my occasional traveling companion, and including some who are even younger than I, at some moment not too far back I began to play the game as well: how many years before I toss aside a work schedule in favor of...something else?


There is, however, the other side of the coin too: where I think I am still planning what to be when I grow up. I will write my book. I will plant yet another garden. I’ll chase foxes away from chicks, should we choose to breed chicks.


In the meantime, in celebration of a perfect near freezing temp, my older girl and I cross-country skied. She hadn’t done that since she was maybe ten, but somewhere in her there is a gliding gene, because she is both good on ice and good on snow.





Yes, time to get lost in the Arboretum.





If you have two hours to fool with, it’s not a bad place to lose yourself in. Just you and the wild turkeys.

different views

I had hearings to attend this morning, but I forgot to take the materials home with me, so that at least one important document that I sorely needed was in my office. It was the sheet specifying the starting time. 8:30? 9:30? I could not remember. And so, to be on the safe side, by 7:30 I found myself on the bus to campus, arriving at the Law School at an hour when few are there. Ah – sunrise over the Capitol. Almost like a view onto the Pantheon or St. Paul’s, there rising above the chimneys and rooftops of the city.





It turned out I was rather early. By an hour.

Presiding over these hearings is not nearly as fun and glamorous as you’d wish. I take comfort in the fact that I respect and like the remaining hearings officers (these are nonresident appeals hearings) and today the panel included one of my favorites – a woman who lives on a farm south of Madison.

I feel, now especially, that there is much to be learned about life on a farm. (Even as this panelist has farm animals and Ed’s farm only has one cat.)

She talks about how they grew their horses from one, to two, to three, to thirteen.
Thirteen??? How is it that you have thirteen horses?
They mate and give birth. And donkeys – we have donkeys too. 
Why? – I ask. 
Well, just because. 
What do you do with them?  
Feed them.

I think about why people have the things they have. Coveting horses or donkeys or goats. (Or something else.) She has a goat too.

Then there’s the cattle. She and her husband raise cattle for the beef that you and I might want.
Do you name them?
Sure. And when we give them up to the slaughterhouse, next day we’ll get the beef, neatly labeled with the cow’s name on the package.

I doubt that I could eat a steak with a name on it. Even as, every few weeks, I think longingly about having a steak or a burger.

After the hearings, I head back home. You always feel spent after listening to people present their sad stories. From Bascom Hill, I get the usual view of the Capitol, stately as ever, seen now from the campus perspective.





Much much later, I make a final trip to the plumber, reviewing the choices I had made for the farmhouse, regretting some, not others, and then I drive home, marveling at how there are so many ways of doing any one thing well.

the last of the cold days

I cannot recall a day this year when I was as tired, as worn out, as cold, as struggling to feel energetic -- as today.

It was, I hope, the last of the severely cold days. And though I have meetings and hearings tomorrow, today was the final teaching day for the week. And I ordered a large supply of coffee for the months ahead, so that should help. Things surely will look better.

In the early evening, I hurried first to a lumber mill, then to a plumber, making those quick choices one makes when the only thing that matters is to get the job of buying over and done with. Ed asks – don’t you want to consider... and I snap back – no I do not. I use choice words to make my point.

In the meantime, more than ever since I have known him, Ed is working long hours as well. Designing something for Tormach, that, and in his spare time, tearing down the chimney at the farmhouse.

The chimney must come down and it is an expensive proposition to remove it. His most unusual Valentine’s Day gift for me is that he will have done the work himself, brick by brick, so that neither of us has to pay for the demolition.

In the early evening I drive to the farmhouse to take note of his progress. The fields are still covered with snow, even as I know that this weekend, finally, we'll be getting a bit of a thaw.

I turn onto Ed’s street and I think – wow, in a couple of months this will be my street.

At the farmhouse, one problem is solved, another emerges. We discover that the light switch doesn’t work. There’s a rumbling in the wall every time you turn the living room lamps on.

Another task to put on the "to do" list.

But, I know where the lavender plant will stand. On a window sill that looks out toward the south west. With the view onto the road and the good sunsets. The farm sure does get the good sunsets.

learning Ewe

Still very cold. Snow covered cold. Bitter winter cold.







I’ll be spending spring break (which comes in mid-March, a mere four weeks away) in Ghana.

It’s not easy to travel there. The paperwork and the medical preparations alone are enough to give one pause.

Today, for example, I went for the various vaccinations and inoculations – seven, and that’s before we even began the conversation about malaria and gastric disturbances. As the nurse passed on voluminous information about the side effects of this and that, I felt, for the first time this winter, hot. Perhaps from the overdose of information and immunization.

And it’s not as if I chose the full range of preventatives. One vaccination I can have later on. You'll want it if you continue to do missionary work in Africa, she tells me.

Missionary work?? What is it about me that caused her to think that this was my reason for going to Ghana?

In fact, I am not on a mission to teach the people there about my ways at all – religious or otherwise. I merely want, for the one week I’ll have there, to make one, maybe two, maybe three children feel like they are the most special kids in the world and that someone on the other side of the globe cares about them and will travel far to play with them and laugh with them and make them feel important, even as, without parents or family, they must rely on others to fill a void. If I listen hard, I may learn some of their tribal language (Ewe). So that the teaching will be by them, rather than by me.

Good, reasonably safe volunteer work in poorer regions of the world is hard to find. I looked long and hard for something that would be culturally sensitive and would offer a needed and requested service. I wont be the only one in Ghana, of course. In fact, a small group of volunteers will be traveling there at the same time (nearly every one of them half my age). Each of us safe, or nearly safe from most of the diseases that plague the tropics.

Ah, but that all could be so lucky.

taking home lavender

The cactus has finished its period of bloom. Time to pick up something else that will brighten a February morning. Typically I’d go for the daffodils that begin to show up in grocery stores right about now. But the daffodil has a perfect moment, followed by days when it looks sad and aging. Whereas a potted bloomer lasts. And perhaps will last some more on the windowsill of the farmhouse, come spring time.

I pass over the cut flowers and buy a potted lavender that’s about to bloom.

I forget that it’s cold outside. (Lavender, at least this particular strain of lavender, doesn't like icy cold.)





Really cold. Coldest of the cold days. And I’m traveling by bus.

I wait at the stop with a potted flower that's  bundled in two plastic pastry bags. Hang in there, lavender!

Around me, I notice the snow piles, still high, still not entirely cleared around the bus stop, still, in places, burying fire hydrants.





What a winter!

I think about the little lavender and the sill where it will eventually stand, taking in the sun of a southern farmhouse exposure.

The bus comes, warm as always, I get on.

It’s hard to believe that in a month or so, I’ll be biking to work again. Not just yet though. Not just yet.

two red packs and a door

I have to accept that this week is going to be somewhat of a wash. I expect to be in my office most daylight hours. It is so difficult to post on days like these...

My last class on Monday ends at an hour when Bascom Mall is dark and quiet. I sometimes look for a live body then, just to exchange a greeting, or comment, but most often I find no one.


Earlier, at midday, I look outside and I think there can be nothing more satisfying than a spot of espresso. There, through the red doors of the Education Building I can find one. It's good to have Education close to Law.





It's snowing. A delicate, sweet snow.


Later, significantly past the hours when one can still catch a snippet of news on TV, I stop at the shop where I used to moonlight last year.

It reminds me that the demands on my time could be even greater now. They were last year in these cold winter months.

I pick up a jar of plum blossom cream and go home to cook dinner.

appliances and Packers

I sip my glass of wine and half watch the football game. I’m glad the Packers are doing well as many of my friends and loved ones care about their success.

But my attention is on running through a list of things accomplished and things to accomplish down at the farmhouse.

For example, what Ed and I did accomplish today was to pick out and purchase 99% of the appliances for the farmhouse kitchen. It took a while. Internet searches and consumer reports and user reviews. Have you ever read user reviews? Powerful stuff – especially the damning ones. Equipped with a list of items that passed the first round, we set out to compare prices. Sears will (and did) beat anything you come up with elsewhere and so we gave a salesclerk a huge reward for having to work on Super Bowl Sunday – we gave him that 99% kitchen appliance sale.

(And I have to admit that we spent less on four major appliances than I did on the refrigerator alone for the condo.)

So what’s with the one missing per cent? It's the wine cooler. I want what I have in the condo: a cooler that has at least a four dozen bottle capacity, one that isn't jarring and ugly,  and one that maintains a steady temp.

It appears that these small little chilling boxes cost more than refrigerators twice their size. Not only that: it seems, from the reviews, that most people absolutely hate their wine coolers. The low ratings are astonishing and befuddling. I mean, we’re asking a box to maintain a steady, somewhat cool temperature. How hard is that? All other purchased appliances have far more complicated tasks set before them and they do them all nearly flawlessly.

Ed tells me wine coolers are for snobs and there aren’t enough out there to warrant a push toward perfection.

Snobs? I just have these favorite bottles. Some are priced for less than $15. Too good to open, I admit, and deserving of a comfortable temperature.

My traveling companion tells me that I need to drink down the bottles I have in my cooler and buy a small little chill box for the specials I may pick up in the future.

Drink down??? Oh, but I can’t. What would warrant my opening a bottle of Chablis I purchased six years ago while writing a story about Chablis wine growers? Or the bottle gifted to me by the producer whose wine harvest I attended four years back? Or the Portuguese bottle I bought on the January day when the sun was so warm and the spray of salty air so fine along the shores of the Atlantic? No, I can’t do it.

Still, I’m extraordinarily proud of all we accomplished -- appliances, super cheap farmhouse lamps for the ceiling... our progress is solid.

Let me put aside wine chillers and go back to game watching. The Packers aren’t as solid as they were an hour ago. Maybe I ought to think Packer thoughts. Go Packers. Yeah.

transition

[First – a thank you to my all the commenters, always. You have been especially fun and funny and sweet in the last days and months, and I deeply appreciate all your writings on Ocean.]

Today we shook hands in agreement, Ed and I. (Not that we fully understand the terms of the agreement just yet, but still, it was a solid shake.) I know this much: slowly I’ll be shifting my belongings to the farmhouse. Come April, I’ll be where I was in the first years of my life: amidst farmlands and, well, farmlands.

We spent the morning going from Menards to Home Depot to lumberyards and plumbing retail outlets. I have been working with an old friend in construction (Andy Anderson) who has seen me through hefty home improvements in the past, to come up with a plan for the farmhouse that is basic and clean. We agreed today on what needs to be done and how to go about doing it.





Yes, there are crumbling walls, broken stairs, missing ceilings. Yes, there are odd holes, cracks, chips and unmatched surfaces. But surely it’s doable. Andy will build, Ed will tackle the outliers, and I can stain and seal. We are set to go.





Ed still marvels that I want to put that much effort into restoring something that is not built with modern sensibilities in mind. Nor is it especially efficient in design. And the neglect has been tremendous.

But I do. And I’m even okay with the downside: the necessary drive to a grocer, the mosquitoes (they are especially dense in this part of Dane County come summertime), the stepping onto a turf that is not my own. There’s a lot of outdoor work too, and I don’t mind.

It’s all part of the idea that I have – whereby the better part of the soft seasons (spring, summer) will be spent on a combination of outdoor work and writing work, and the rest -- the harder seasons, they’re for my classroom life. And one of the best things about the farmhouse is that it’s a mere twelve minutes by car to campus. Or 45 minutes by bike. Or split in equal portions between the two.


In the meantime, tonight we did the very urban thing of going to Sundance Theaters with my older girl and to Porta Alba for pizza afterwards. I have to soak up those last bits of city life. Before I turn into a pumpkin and bask in the sprawling farmed fields to the south of Madison.

writing it down

In an unusual confluence of pressures and demands, both Ed and I hurriedly went off to attend to work issues early this morning. But somewhere in the middle of those early hours, I took time to look at the NYTimes and I allowed myself to be amused by this article (on the subject of the proliferation of writers who want to publish, for the world to see, their memoirs).

I like the opening line: A moment of silence, please, for the lost art of shutting up.

But I don’t like the overall message: that if you live an ordinary life, you do not deserve to see yourself in print.

I never thought that it is the extraordinariness of life that made you an interesting candidate for a memoir (though obviously extraordinary people living in extraordinary circumstances have a foot in the door there). Instead, I thought it was about whether you had an original story to tell and could tell it well. Original need not be fame-driven or revolutionary in nature.

Then, toward the end of the article, I see that the author has a message to those who do not have either an interesting story to tell or the ability to craft something halfway readable: go blog.

Well, sure, you can do that, but why equate a blogging field with a pile of nothingness? If you’re going to have a boring and poorly written blog, isn’t that going to give you the same meager returns as a boring and poorly written memoir would?

People write for many reasons. I see no reason to discourage anyone from writing. If you don’t want to read fragile efforts of another soul, on paper or on the Internet – don’t then! But if someone writes, and there is even only one other person who reads her or his writing (a mother? a friend?) then we’ve got a conversation going. And what could be better than two (or more) people, groping to understand one another.


In other news, after attending to the nagging details of work, Ed and I broke away and by 4, we were at Owen Park. Just five minutes from my condo, infinitely pretty but especially in the late daylight of a winter day.





We clicked into our skis and took off. I was so dazzled by the light in the woods and over the prairie, that I managed to crash at the bottom of a steep descent.






Serves me right. In the same way that people ought not text and drive, they should also not ski and take photos.





And did I mention that I had the pleasure of watching, for a brief second, a wild turkey consider seriously the possibility of befriending Ed?





The turkey thought better of it and flew away.

Wet, somewhat cold, but ultimately satisfied, we returned home and Ed fell asleep before I even finished dinner.

chairs

It’s not that I dislike winter, it’s just that I like spring and summer so much more. Is there a person who doesn’t prefer the first daffodil to the second, third, fourth blast of arctic air?

It was a cold day today. But, I had a few minutes between classes and Thursday is cheap latte day at the UBS coffee counter off Library Mall and so I pushed myself out the door for the walk down the hill.

And I’m glad that I did. I was flooded with kind feelings toward the sunshine and the crisp air and I thought – this isn’t bad (even as I know that spring is better).

And I wanted to extend my walk a little further, with a detour to the lake. That was cool (in all meanings encapsulated therein). This year the Union Terrace chairs are put away for the winter season, but if you want chairs, you’ll find some, because the artist (and MFA candidate at UW) Hongtao Zhou has created for us chairs, out of the waters of Lake Mendota.





They look like they’re the grandfolk of chairs – lived through storms and still here to tell us about it. The artist began the project just last week (you need a good dose of cold before you can reap the waters from the lake, mix them with snow and mold anything durable out of it all), before the storm. To me, they look all the more majestic, if a bit frazzled.





I thought of sitting in one and then decided against it. Enough to have had this solo moment with them, out on the lake, just me and a bunch of icy chairs.

the silence after the storm

It is one quiet world out there. As if the Super Bowl came to Wisconsin a few days ahead of schedule and even the bus drivers stayed home to watch.

Early, at daybreak, the storm had weakened, or at least moved on. It left behind a white and silent world. From my rooftop, the normally busy University Avenue looks car-less, deserted.





In the afternoon, I take a walk. I mean it to be short – the wind is biting, the temperatures are low. But I get caught up in this wonderfully pristine world of the day after. Plowed, yes, by now its plowed. But white nonetheless.





The distribution of snow is uneven. In some places it is modestly deep. In others it is immodestly deep.





I come across a team, busily digging up a sidewalk. Looking for something ? – I ask. The fire hydrant, they tell me.

Ah, red. You can’t see red if it’s buried in snow.

You can, however, spot it if it’s on a branch. Even partly hidden in bramble, it stands out in this still and powder white world.

blizzard

When the chancellor of my university announced tonight that the campus would be closing tomorrow because of the blizzard, I was disappointed. And then shocked that I should be disappointed. I ought to be dancing jigs and thinking of the many ways I can make use of a free day. And yes, there's that, but I must be honest – I wanted to teach my classes tomorrow.

And perhaps this, more than anything else will allow you to understand how much I love working with law students.


I left school late (office hours today) and the bus was so crowded that the driver almost refused to let all anxious riders board. [Future mayor of Madison: if you want residents to ride the city buses, you must have enough space for them to get on board.] It was not the perfect bus for me – an express, one that took me beyond the grocery store. I had to backtrack.

The wind was vicious and the snow was verging on brutal. Are you okay? – someone asked as I struggled with two grocery bags back to the condo. Yes, yes, you need to get hardy in life.

It’s been a tough season for so many. And I, too, look forward to a Feb. 2nd groundhog who will predict a speedy spring. I just wish that I could stay on track and be in class tomorrow.

crazy snow

Oh, to have many irons in the fire... To invest in a number of possible outcomes and anticipate that at least some (maybe all?) will come to pass – ah, that’s satisfying!

But, it means, too, that time zips by with the speed of falling snow.

And there is a lot of falling snow right now. Madly swirling. I take note fleetingly on my walk home from the bus stop.





Only fleetingly. At home, I have work to do, irons to put into fires.

Or, in the alternative, I can finish my work and put the feet up and watch a late show. And pick up on the irons and the fires another day.

the return of color

It’s fine and well to sing praises for a cloudy sky, but truly, it cannot be that all photos from this month are not too far from being almost completely black and white. What happened to the bright Midwestern sky? The stunningly clear expanse of sky that casts long blue shadows on fresh snow?

Today, the clouds went off somewhere to the sidelines (gathering momentum for the snows that are heading our way) and the world became a place of color again.

True, I had the usual work and Sunday cleaning to keep me housebound early in the day, but even at home, things looked a lot brighter. Helped by the tardy Christmas cactus that decided to explode in color just now. Like leaping  swans, only in red.





In the afternoon, I go down to the farmette to inspect the first stage of farmhouse improvement: the replacement of ten windows. I know you can’t tell from the outside, but oh my, what a difference a good window can make to a home! (We still have to stain the wood, but that’s a project for a warmer month.)





It is a good day to admire windows. Looking out at a blue sky from windows that are delightfully fresh and solid gives hope – as if all other issues that the house has (and there are many) can, too, be someday a thing of the past.


Since the county park is a mere five minutes from the farmette, we take our skis for a quick spin by Lake Waubesa.






It wont be long before this will be virtually in my back yard. Slowly, step by step, I am getting used to the idea.

the perfect winter day

Late last night we went to get Ed a replacement shoe. [For the ski shoe he lost, who knows in what fashion, back in December.] And no, you get no discounts if you only need one shoe. The clerk hopes that when he next loses a shoe, it will not be from the same foot. There’s not much you can do with two shoes without a mate.

Ed wasn’t totally ready to give up finding the old one. He had every intention of calling the Dane County parks to see if perhaps... What can I say, the man’s a dreamer.

But it no longer matters because today, we woke up to a 32 degree day. Positively a heat wave. A perfect day for outdoor winter play. Could Ed say no to using his new shoe? He could not.


We drive out to Indian Lake. It is a test by fire: Ed hasn’t skied since the sprained ankle. He’s thinking of maybe doing an easy run to test his capabilities. But how can you go for the flat and boring when you can have the delightful hills around Indian Lake County Park?

It is such a beautiful day to be outside! There, look at the landscape heading out of town!





Okay, so we don’t have the clear blue sky. But the temps shoot up to thirty and this is just perfect for any kind of winter sport!





Indian Lake County Park is probably my most beloved local place of refuge. This is where I took daughters when they were freshly out of diapers (in my recollection of things). And this is where today I can enjoy a week-end day without an agenda.





No rush. No place to be, no list to work through.





Beautiful.

lost

It’s time for a break. Too many hours glued to a schedule. Too many days that look like not much of anything. Late Friday afternoon, Ed and I set out to reconvene with nature.

We aren’t thinking of a significant reconvention. Ed had been skiing daily (when I had been in Poland in December) in a county park by his farmette and we're thinking it would be a good reintroduction, given the sprained ankle situation (his, not mine), for him to go back there now.

We pull up to this park that borders Lake Waubesa. It’s cloudy outside, and daylight is fading rather fast, but still, I’m thrilled to be stepping out into layers of a white countryside.





I'm zipping up my shoes, Ed reaches for his own.

Where are they?  There's one. Where is the other?

No use. It can't be found. Ed recalls his last ski outing. December. Many snowfalls ago. He looks around just in case... No, no second shoe lying about at the side of the road, waiting to be reclaimed. (What a surprise.)


Ed goes back home to scout around there, I head out around the lake on my own. Toward the railway tracks, over the place where the Yahara streams into the lake.






It's quiet here. Very pretty in a monochromatic sort of way.


I push forward and then eventually turn around and head back. And every now and then I pause and consider this: how can one lose a shoe??

home town

If you live in a city, a town for, say, ten years – is it then your home town? What about twenty? Thirty? Surely thirty?

I’ve been in Madison now since 1979 – so almost 32 years – and yet, at no time have I felt so much as if it were home as perhaps tonight.

It was a no big deal day. At work -- teaching in the morning, teaching in the afternoon, meeting students – all that usual stuff until the sun sets.

By five I am done and walking along State Street. A different kind of evening – one where I am to attend a political fund raiser followed by a dinner out.





So I walk along State Street and I think – my, there are new stores here. How did I miss this one? Ah winter! I’m never out in these parts when it turns cold outside. Give or take a couple of months and I’ll be rambling again. On my red bike. Up and down.

And it strikes me that life will continue in this way: spring will come, I will take out my bike and not worry about bus schedules again. Yesterday will have merged with tomorrow. How satisfying!

I reach the political fundraiser and Ed joins me as well and between the two of us, there’s enough history in the room to make it a very interesting little place indeed. (The political candidate who is running for office is a Madison fixture: he has been in and out of city politics for as many years as I can remember.)





Tonight, I hear someone say – I’ve never enjoyed a social event as much as I have enjoyed coming to these rallies in support of (our candidate)... I can understand it. It’s like going to your college reunion in ten year increments, only without the hang-ups. No one cares how you look or how little you’ve achieved in your waning years.

I run into a lawyer friend who used to practice alongside me when I did abuse and neglect cases in Dane county court. I think – the shocking thing is that I remember him and he remembers me so well. Madison. It’s Madison’s fault, isn’t it?

Then Ed and I and a colleague/good friend go out to dinner. At the Costa Rican place around the corner. There isn’t really room for us even as the waitperson tries to squeeze us in, but to do so she must cut into the space of someone else. And so we compromise: we pull tables together to form one big whole, but we keep our separate discourse, and I think yet again – ah, Madison... you are so perfect.

And maybe I am sentimental, what with the end of the week drawing near and the political fundraiser tonight, but darn it all, this is such a good little town in which to mark the days and sunsets!

frosty

My farmers sent me the usual email reminder – this is the day to pick up my CSA spinach. Okay, I remembered anyway. And I was pleased that I had this forced detour because the window for pickups on campus is tiny: between 3:30 (their delivery) and 5 (when the building closes). Meaning I will have to leave my office before dark and I will have an excuse to walk a little, rather than hopping on the bus and hurrying home.

Yes, you might say it’s a colorless walk...





...but not without hidden sweet chirps and chortles.





A walk. Good. But there is another reason to smile at the message. The farmer/author wrote that right now, the spinach is frost sweetened (and wonderful). Think about it! Something is made better, tastier, sweeter by horribly frosty weather.

Too bad it’s just spinach. Too bad it’s not you and me.

light matters

There is an up side to getting home when it’s good and dark. I know there is. I just haven’t found it.

That’s the trouble with winter – it doesn’t give you any time to enjoy daylight.

I walk in the dusky light that would be beautiful elsewhere, but not here, not on the way from my office to the bus stop.





I approach University Avenue and I see the bus pulling toward the next stop. I chase it, even as I wonder -- why? Is it that I want to get somewhere before it is completely dark? The driver waits for me. I am ridiculously grateful.

I ride the bus with a great number of others and it is a short ride. (Even as others waste not a minute of it.)





After, I emerge, at the stop by the grocery store and it is nearly dark. And by the time I’m done shopping for dinner, there’s not a shred of light left.

But I’m okay with January otherwise. Really. (How many more days?)