A Toasty 29º Morning

7:00

Long Point At 7:00

7:28

7:34

Fog Rising At 7:34

A striking morning sky of blue-gray, rouge, and white fills my windows. It's seasonably warm, I suppose—29º—and will climb into the high 30s later in the day. I've been up since 6:00, scouring the newspapers for something hopeful. I guess David Brooks' words from the February 13th New York Times will have to do: "Today we have more talent in this country than ever before. The history of America is the history of convulsions and periods of rupture, followed by creativity and periods of repair. We've lived through the rupture; now, Times readers, let's do the repair."

Friday was another cold but blue-sky day. The morning was the usual routine: I was up early, read, and wrote the blog. Evie woke around 8:45 and came downstairs for coffee to edit the blog. I was interested in a hike and wrote my neighbor Jim, who said he'd love to, but couldn't get away until around noon. So I cleaned up the kitchen, pulled the hambone out of the refrigerator, and let it simmer in water for a couple of hours, hoping to finish the Senate Navy Bean soup today.

Hiking Bentley Nature Preserve

Open Creek

I walked down to Jim's at 11:45, jumped in his truck along with Ripley, his trusty dog, and we were off to the Bentley Nature Preserve near Strunk Road and Route 86. We parked and followed a trail made by hikers for the first couple of hundred yards, but then it stopped. From then on, we bushwhacked our way through a foot to a foot and a half of snow, hoping we were going in the right direction. It was quite a workout, especially since we weren't sure we were on the right track. We checked the maps on our phones numerous times, hoping we were heading toward the parking lot. We finally made it to a creek we remembered crossing the last time we were on the trail. Eventually, we emerged in someone's backyard and glimpsed Jim's truck in the distance. We'd walked only a rigorous mile, and it took us an hour. I'll wait for spring to hike it again and ask the Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy to mark the trail, as they did for Dobbins Woods.

Making A Path

Bridge Over Frozen Creek

We didn't get home until 1:30, and Evie had my lunch ready: two chicken salad sandwiches. I watched my show, but exhausted from the hike, I went upstairs for a nap and read. By 3:30, I was back downstairs on the couch reading, while Evie was in the TV room watching her show after prepping our dinner. 

Happy Couple

Colorful Tents Off Long Point

We enjoyed a glass of wine or two and a striking dusk as fishermen enjoyed the late afternoon sun. Around 7:00, we had dinner: rotisserie chicken, baked potatoes, and salad. We watched a couple of Colberts, the Winter Olympics, and an HGTV show before Evie went to bed. I then watched the first half of my alma mater, Ohio University, play an undefeated Miami of Ohio. I was hoping the announcers would mention our 1964 NCAA-bound team, which beat Louisville and Kentucky to reach the Elite Eight, then lost to Michigan. If we'd won, we would have made it to the Final Four—the farthest a MAC team has ever gone. Oh well, that's history. I'd had enough after the first half and wanted to get back to my CIA thriller, The Seventh Floor by David McCloskey.

Last year, Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow of the Washington Post reported that at a campaign event at Mar-a-Lago in April 2024, then-candidate Trump told oil executives they should raise $1 billion for his campaign. In exchange, Trump promised he would get rid of Biden-era regulations and make sure no more such regulations went into effect, in addition to lowering taxes. Trump told them $1 billion would be a “deal,” considering how much money they would make if he were in the White House.

In a ceremony at the White House yesterday, surrounded by coal industry leaders, lawmakers, and miners, President Donald J. Trump was presented with a trophy that calls him “the undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal.” At the event, Trump signed an executive order directing the Defense Department to buy billions of dollars of power produced by coal and decried “the Radical Left’s war on the industry.” Anna Betts of The Guardian noted that Trump also announced the Department of Energy will spend $175 million to “modernize, retrofit, and extend” the life of coal-fired power plants in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Kentucky.