The lead in line is from a Gordon Lightfoot song. I used to play and sing it, along with other Lightfoot material.
The last time we saw Lightfoot in concert was in Sarasota FL. We had free tickets to the concert and were really looking forward to it. Lightfoot arrived on stage and proceeded to perform songs he had written after nearly bleeding to death because his liver had been destroyed by years of ethanol abuse. I’m sure the material came from the bottom of his despair and was highly significant to his potential recovery. We left at intermission, having listened to an entire set of “I’m in recovery” songs. We’d hoped to hear some of his old and proven material and could have stomached a few of the new and personal songs. The concert had the feel of a Salvation Army recruitment drive on a street corner in a red light district. It wasn’t going anywhere and it wasn’t changing anything.
12 step recoveries while certainly the return to productive life for many people; leave me looking for the nearest door to anywhere. I truly hope they help the people who undertake them as a means of defeating an addiction. Like jail house conversions to Christianity or Islam, I don’t trust the sincerity of too many people in 12 step programs.
The forecast foot of snow has not materialized. Instead, a pocket of warmer air moved in at lower altitude and melted falling snow. This morning, I found 3-4 inches of sodden, heavy snow with an icy crust. The county has already scraped our road and it will soon be ice coated. While I was shoveling the decks at 0630 a light but steady rain continued to fall. That has continued off and on all morning along with intermittent light snow, pellet snow, sleet, and freezing rain. We’re hoping that the freezing rain moves away. The entire eastern border of Tennessee has a band of snow and freezing rain entraining up toward Virginia. All the precipitation is forecast to end this afternoon. Travel is going to be extremely hazardous. The temperature sat around 32°F all night and is currently at 34°F. We are told it will plummet in the evening, hence today’s lead in.
The decks are already covered with a layer of frozen rain. Sleet is imbedded in that layer, providing texture but no traction. Venturing out onto the decks will be like skating.
Gloria managed to take a few photographs last night as snow covered the back deck.
Today is most likely to be spent on class work. Gloria has a project that needs to be at a higher stage of completion by Monday. I have several hundred pages of reading to finish. There’s wood to be brought inside, a stove to be tended, and dinner of some nature will help keep us warm. I’ve two chuck eye steaks thawing for dinner. I may serve them with sautéed yellow squash.
I write this with sincere gratitude for the warm dry conditions I am presently enjoying. I’ve hitch-hiked a bit when I was younger. It’s not a safe or timely means of travel. I sit here and write with warm phalanges rather than risking frost bite along with other dangers. There are no boots warm enough to sustain hope when the sun is sinking and every car and truck flies by in a cloud of dirty, gritty, chilly, mist. Maybe Lightfoot knows more about hitch-hiking than I do. Maybe that lonesome knowledge is what drew him to the false warmth of ethanol that destroyed his liver, nearly took his life, and was also the source of the songs that left us unsatisfied with the concert and unwilling to sit through the second half of a concert that was going nowhere. Maybe he’s spent too many nights on the side of the road down by Boulder Dam. I’ve never hitched around Boulder Dam but I know where it is. That ages me, and you; if you have an inkling where Boulder Dam can be found. “I’ll take geography for $2000, Alex!”
The photo used in this entry was taken by Gloria Lenon, 29 January 2010. Thank you for permission to use it.
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