A Walk in the Chautauqua Institution

A strange morning, as Evie was up before me by about 15 minutes. It's now 7:45 and another gray day, though the glow of the lake a half hour ago always pleases me.  For now, it's a calm, steady soft gray, even though the far side gives a slight hint of black.  And as has been usual the past four mornings, two fisherman, slight stick figures from my view, are out in the center of the lake, the only silhouettes on the white lake. Today they have no tents and seem to be sitting on buckets as  they wet their line,

In Sundial I learned that the winter moon often is in the sky for 14 hours, lighting everything on a moonlight walk. This past Monday night would have been the time to walk, as it was really cold, with a clear sky.  The moon even blocks out most of the stars because of it power. It's supposed to snow a couple of inches a day, so we can expect a nice white cover of snow, hiding some of the dirt/mud created by the cars and snow plows.  A little colder today, 24 degrees, and supposed to get up to the high 20's.

Wednesday night's terrible snow storm wreaked havoc on commuters. It took Walt, my brother in law, six hours to get home and eventually he parked his car in Herndon and walked home because the roads were so bad.  From Drew's Facebook page, I could see he was stuck too, and it sounds like it also took him  close to six hours, arriving home around 11:00.  Cars were abandoned everywhere; where did the people go, how did they get home, and if not, where did they stay?  I wonder if all theses winter storms for the East Coast are just flukes or harbingers of the changes in weather that are to come, either part of a natural cycle or, I know I am going to sound alarmist, global warning.

We watched a really touching movie last night, THE STATION AGENT, written by Tom Mc Carthy, who also wrote one of our favorites THE VISITOR.  Very little significant happens as three very different people, a man suffering from dwarfism with a love of trains, a women, recently divorced who lost her 7 year old son, an a young Cuban, who sells coffee from a truck.  The three come together as Finn, the dwarf, inherits a train station, when his best friend, the owner of a model train store, dies.  His arrival at the train station and moving in, begins this touching developing relationships between the three. None of the glitz, sex, violence, or hand held camera of the modern film, more like the slow moving and developing European films that I  love.  I highly recommend it.  And we just finished the firsts season of MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE on Netflix---I cannot believe we didn't watch it last year.  It's amazingly good and apt.

We just got back from a short walk through the CI, a beautiful day for a walk, as the snow was falling lightly and the trees were still frosted with the snow in most parts.  As usual, we stopped at the library, returned a book, and stopped briefly at the bookstore before heading back to our car.  If we take a walk around the entire CI, it takes us close to an hour; we can also snow shoe when there's lots of snow or cross country ski but today, the plows were already out and the roads were best for walking.  We do usual have cramp-ons (spikes) on our shoes to keep from slipping and we both have become accustomed to using poles when we walk, for stability and we supposed use 40% more calories/energy if you use them vigorously.  I have grown to like them quite a bit and use they even if we walk on asphalt roads; I just put the rubber tips on for walking on hard surfaces.