So all this strange white stuff falling around the streets this winter (and they are calling for more this week!) does put one in the mood for curling up on the sofa. Accompanied of course by hot chocolate and a blanket with a book that makes you feel even warmer than you are.
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats: So classic. Every kid should own a copy.
His Dark Materials Trilogy trilogy by Phillip Pullman: It’s the armoured polar bear. And that so much of it takes place in the North. And for some reason, “North” is always cold in fantasy books.
Little House in the Big Woods and The Long Winter (Little House) by Laura Ingalls Wilder: for some reason, it’s the winter scenes that stick the most with me from these books. The snow candy, the trip across the Big Slough, Papa playing violin during a winter storm. Good times.
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George: It takes place in Alaska. Of course there is going to be a lot of snow in the book.
It’s freezing — an extraordinary 0 Fahrenheit — and it’s snowing, and in the language that is no longer mine, the snow is qanik – big, almost weightless crystals falling in clumps and covering the ground with a layer of pulverized white frost
Going to give this live-blogging thing a try again. It’s been a while but I won’t listen to the speech otherwise for fear it will depress me (see the things I do for you!)
Tonight we are listening to the dulcet tones of Diane Sawyer on ABC (because I don’t have cable and PBS keeps cutting out on me) and her little friend George Stephanopoulos.
President Obama had a sit down with Diane Sawyer on Monday where he happened to mention that he would rather be an awesome one-term president than a mediocre two-term president. Which is of course the right answer to her question … I mean, what else was he going to say?
But here’s the problem: he is in serious danger of being a mediocre one-term president. Now, I know I said I believed in the long game. And I do, I really do. He’s still got three years after all. Technically.
So tomorrow is Obama’s big day … his first State of the Union address. And we don’t really know what he’s going to say but we have some ideas. So here are 5 things Obama could talk about and the odds that he will.
On this day in 1525, Conrad Grebel poured water over the head of George Blaurock and so the first Anabaptist was created.
Grebel, Blaurock, Felix Manz –they were all young men, under 30 years old (except for old man Blaurock who was a whopping 34) and they burned with a conviction. They were domestic religious terrorists of a sort; we have no understanding today of how insanely brave these guys were.
I left home young and not till old do I come back,
My accent is unchanged, my hair no longer black.
The children don’t know me, whom I meet on the way,
“Where do you come from, reverend sir?” they smile and say.
So all this strange white stuff falling around the streets this winter (and they are calling for more this week!) does put one in the mood for curling up on the sofa. Accompanied of course by hot chocolate and a blanket with a book that makes you feel even warmer than you are.
