A Chilly Saturday Morning

6:41

6:42

7:54

It's 8:00 and I have been up since 6:30, to a gray sky, a white lake, and 18º.  Evie is up as well, as we are listening to NPR as Only A Game, my other Saturday favorite, has just ended.  We both were saddened to read that one of our favorite novelists, Pat Conroy, author of THE GREAT SANTINI and THE PRINCE OF TIDES, died yesterday.  We both read a couple of his obituaries, not realizing the extent of his troubled family (four of his siblings have tried to commit suicide) and early life (a violent, cruel, and abusive father).  It, however, led to his success as a novelist as he suggests below:

“One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.  “I could not have been born into a better one. I don’t have to look very far for melodrama. It’s all right there.”

Hunkering Down To Stay Warm

Yesterday was as expected, a day of blue skies and sun, guaranteed to give pause to the winter blues most of us are beginning to feel.  It's a sign of spring, however evanescent, of the warming weather to come.  After a leisurely morning of listening to the radio, drinking a couple of cups of coffee, eating breakfast and doing some reading, I drove off, stopping first at Ryder's Cup for coffee, then in Celeron, near the Chadakoin outlet, where the lake is open and the Canadian geese gather.  

Open Lake In Celeron

Celeron's Lighthouse

I then dropped off my tax information to my tax guy on Main Street in Jamestown.  Downtown was busy, the snow melting along the sidewalks, water dripping off the roofs.  I then stopped at Wegman's to pick up a few things for a pizza we are making on Sunday, then the bank to cash a check, then home.   Lunch was leftover spaghetti and the last episode of NARCOS.  Not a happy ending as Pablo Escobar ends up escaping the DEA and Colombian military police. 

Walking In Victoria

Evie left at 1:00 for the Y and to return some things to Sam's Club, getting home around 3:30 with a rotisserie chicken from Sam's, just in case we wanted to stay home Friday night, rather than go out to eat as we had planned.   I decided to see how my knee held up so I walked the Woodlawn/Victoria Woods on a sunny late afternoon (it was fine).  Well, we both were happy to stay home, to enjoy the sunset, along with some appetizers and a Manhattan before having a chicken dinner with asparagus and mashed potatoes.   We then watched a couple of episodes of HOUSE OF CARDS on Netflix, the real reason for our staying home.  Francis is up to his usual tricks and though Claire, the First Lady, left him at the end of Season Three, he has coerced her into returning, with threats and promises, none of which he will keep.

One of Pat Conroy's least known novel but our favorite is THE WATER IS WIDE, where Conroy sets down his experiences teaching a group of impoverished black students on Daufuskie Island, off the South Carolina coast near Hilton Head.  It was made into a film called Conrack, starring Jon Voight in 1974.