Erasing the line between Autumn and Winter

Let's jump to gratitude right away today. We're grateful that we're not sitting on a deer stand getting soaked and cold today. The Better Half claims that every year we complain that that Autumn's weather has been the worst ever. She may be correct, but then, so might we! The weather reports we've seen have snowfall centered 50 or 100 miles east and a little south of here. It'll get here soon enough. Meanwhile we get to enjoy cold and raw.

wet and cold and cold and wet

Photo by J. Harrington

In anticipation of the onslaught of Winter, we've been adding to our stash stacks supply of books to be read. Today we stopped at Common Good Books and left with copies of:

• Hearth - Smith and O'Connor
• How to Read Water - T. Gooley
• Songs from the Blue River - P. Kingsnorth
• Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media - H. Erdrich

Bookstores too often put us in the position of Groucho Marx or W.C. Fields or whoever claimed "I can resist anything but temptation."

The full moon this month falls the day after Thanksgiving, on Friday the 23rd. The Anishnaabe call it gashkadino-giizis(oog), freezing moon. The Lakota refer to it as waniyetu wi, moon when winter begins. Both fit our North Country Novembers very well. As we think about it, we bet that Native Americans were wise enough to stay away from this on and off Daylight Savings Time nonsense. Since such a small proportion of the population is employed in agriculture, and it appears the shift doesn't save energy, let's forget it.

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry

Howard Nemerov, 1920- 1991

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow 
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

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