it's cold, very cold. like ten, or less, and i don't think it will last long, but it has lasted a while and i think some people are becoming a little loopy. it's hard to live with this stuff. for example, when i woke up this morning, there was a brand new inch of snow on the ground. it was hard to tell how badly it messed up the drivers outside my front window; they seemed to be going their usual 35 in spite of it, and in spite of the fact that it's a brick street, sometimes quite slick. i watched them for a while. finally i got out in it. the driving wasn't all that bad; most of the main roads are pretty clear, hard-salted. but it was unpleasant. cold, slippery, iced over in many places - especially the side streets.

the sun came out and gave us a hand - it melted and dried a lot of the snowy fluff on the street that would have otherwise frozen into ice. another day or two of sun and it'll be back to normal.

but what is normal? here we are in mid-january. normal is bleak. it's winter.

i'm about to put the beginnner's guide to quakerism out into the world. it's a pamphlet; actually i have been printing it for four years. it was written primarily by maurine pyle, an old quaker friend of mine who died, maybe two or three years ago. i printed it at home for a while but my printer got worse and worse. finally in frustration i put it on amazon, but then i found a printer who would do them for cheap. other printers ignored my inquiries or have just sat on it for a while. that's how you can tell they don't really want to do it. it's radical religiously - they already know that without reading it - and maybe in their hearts they just don't want to be cranking that kind of thing out. but a press i found was willing to do it - and ship it from oregon. i'll work on setting it up tomorrow.

in the bitter heart of winter, i think of my parents. both died in january. i'm not even clear on the exact dates - my father, i think, on the 20th; my mother, a few years earlier, on the fourteenth? not sure, but that would make my mother's date tonight. we were there when she took her last breath. her mind had preceded her. she no longer knew who we were. she heard a car just outside, waiting to take her; she wanted to go with.

las cruces at that time, mid january, is actually quite pleasant. that's whhy people go to live there. at night it's cool, maybe a nice breeze. didn't matter, we were in grief. my father at the time was actually angry. how can you be married fifty years and have somebody not know who you are. well it happens, it happens in nature, that's how it happened. he got over it; he even had a girlfriend, but i think he was still angry. you can't take it personally; i tried not to.

went out to drive out to my son's trailer; it's three miles. sooooo cold. i didn't feel like hanging around. one of the kids wanted a ride somewhere to pick something up. sorry, it's after ten, i don't want to make one more trip out here. it's toooooo cold. the street was solid ice. it was still; nobody outside or around. not sure my son likes it out there. but it's really hard on us when he's in here. everyone is trying to figure out how to make it in this world. it's not easy when it's ten degrees. saw one lady walking; another was homeless, at the caseys. ouch. i'm glad i'm not them.

it sometimes seems like a cruel world. more accurately, it's just a world where if you don't know anyone, it seems really cold. slowly we've come to know the place. it's just a town. it will hopefully feel warmer, as time goes by.