Gray Skies, Frozen Lake, and Warm

7:50

Evie's Brown Garden

It looks just like yesterday morning, gray on gray but no drizzle at the moment.   The lake remains frozen though pockets of open water are starting to appear.  It's 34 degrees, with a high of 50 today and it looks like that's the way it's going to be for the next week, no snow, unseasonably warm temperatures.  We may be kayaking soon rather than skiing. Because of the warm weather and the southerly wind, high winds are expected later in the day, perhaps up to 50 mph.   The yard, as you can see, has little charm or green as this time of the year Chautauqua is at its worst.  The only sign of spring seems to be the beginning of birds song, just a hint occasionally as I walk in the woods.  I assume the ice fishing is over though there may still be an intrepid angler somewhere, willing to challenge the ice.

Yesterday blends in with other days, yoga and Y in the morning, reading and watching some TV in the afternoon, then dinner, chicken picata, with rice and spinach for dinner.  We watched, finally, the movie of the play Doubt, a play I taught perhaps six years ago when I heard the playwright Patrick Stanley talk about the text on Charlie Rose.  It's set in a catholic school, where the Priest (Phillip Seymour Hoffmann) is accused, with little evidence, of child abuse by the Nun and Principal (Meryl Streep).  The reluctant spectator is a young nun played by Amy Adams.  Viola Davis plays the mother whose son is involved in this controversy.  From Hoffmann's sermons, which Streep views as signs of his guilt, to the doubts of Amy Adams, and Viola Davis's acceptance of her son's innate 'difference,' the play leaves the audience with more questions than answers, especially Streep's final words of 'doubt', of her accusations, of her beliefs, or God, we don't know.  I have read the play four or five times, seen it performed and now made into a movie and it still is powerful and worth seeing.  Nothing is easy, everything is complicated, especially if you think hard about things, just like life, if examined.