A Daguerreotype Photo Morning Sky

7:00

7:35

Up at 6:45, to darkness, of course, but the sky at the moment is something out of Brueghel's winter paintings, the sky an ominous, almost angry, gray and white off towards the southeast.  To the north, a threatening dark gray, not a good start to the day.

Yesterday was not a day to remember and both of us laughed last night as we went to bed that I would have little to say about our day because we went no where, did practically nothing, so I should just make up something exciting and interesting.  Well, the exciting part of the day was putting away our  summer clothes, getting out our winter things, for me long underwear, flannel shirts, ski pants, coats, more  fleeces, and winter boots, for Evie the same sort of things, including various winter hats, depending on her mood.  She likes winter hats! The interesting part of the day was Evie's wasting of the day, doing nothing but vegging out on the couch, unusual for her and of course, the guilt  that followed for having wasted the day.  Where does guilt come from?  Why feel guilty about wasting a day?  I never do.  Different upbringings? Religions? Probably both.

Around 4:30, I had to get outside so I went for a walk through the Woodlawn/Victoria woods.  It felt great, the cold air, the dampness of the woods, the wet leaves and trails, the fallen branches blocking the path.  I met up with the Johnson's, our neighbors, out  also to enjoy the afternoon and we talked, or rather I listened, as John is a talker.  Good people.

For dinner, we had Evie's version of chicken cacciatore, a great sauce, with mushrooms, over pasta and chicken.  We watched a movie neither one of us really liked though it was up for an Academy Award, The Life of Pi.  I read the books ages ago, liked it,  and though the cinematography was amazing, a movie has to be more than that.  For us, it was slow, predictable, and not much of a story.

I am reading the second book of David Downing's series set in Nazi Germany in 1939,  Silesian Station.  Obviously, I am in to the series, now five books I, but the setting upsets me as I read along, the strangulation hold the Nazis have on its people.  Gestapo and Kripo frighten the masses with their power to arrest and incarcerate, even dispose of, with impunity and the press, controlled, too, by the Nazis, only sings the praises of the regime.  The main protagonist, John Russell, an English/American journalist, however, feels he must stand up to this evil,  perhaps because he may only be deported but as a reader, we can sympathize with his plight, and wonder if something like that could even happen here in the US. It could.  And would we have the moral courage to stand up and protest? I doubt it.