My apologies, all you people there on the upper east coast. I hear that the ghastly weather you’re having is our fault. Something to do with this monstrous ridge of high pressure plunging down on us; creates a monster low for you.<\/p>\n
Believe me, I was thinking of you this afternoon while I contemplated whether or not I should wear the tee-shirt with a turtleneck or skip the turtleneck for a dog walk. I felt soooooo guilty.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Such a weirdly wonderful winter it’s been here! Yes, we’ve had a multiple of great galloping gales of rain, including that 6.5-incher three weeks ago. But between them (instead of the usual endless months of mostly desultory drizzle, showers, and week-long gloomfests) we’ve had pleasant days.<\/p>\n
None as pleasant as today, though. Many summer days aren’t this nice. Still, it’s been warm and light enough that early plants have been trying to come up since around Christmas. The lawns are greening with moss. (Not that they ever turn brown, but they’re not usually this spring green. Even the roads are coated with a patina of moss, which I’ve never seen before. And this afternoon (while thinking of you, above), I watched honeybees dancing around a shrub, some relative of lavender, I think, that’s already blooming.<\/p>\n
Hope we don’t get a hard frost. And good fortune to you amid the blizzards. Meantime, I’m sitting in what I usually refer to with great irony as my sun room with the door open and the blinds half down to block Sol’s glare.<\/p>\n
I tell ya, it’s a tough life.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
I’ve just run across this new (to me, at least) Amazon service called PrimePantry<\/a>. It’s a way of ordering large single boxes filled with household and kitchen essentials. Spices, cleaners, crackers, mixes, antacids, vitamins & supplements, baby care items, pet food, etc. The postage isn’t free, though the service is available only to Prime members. But the item prices seem very good. They even tell you what percentage of your box each item takes up so you can maximize the power of the $5.99 shipping.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n It seems wrong, though very Internetly, to mix tragedies with lite topics, but the news has been weird lately. First David Crowley (would-be producer of Gray State<\/i>, which looked like it was going to be good<\/a>) kills his family and himself. Then Brad Spangler, sometimes referred to as a philosopher, co-founder of the Center for a Stateless Society, posted to his F*c*b**k page a lucidly written but completely disordered confession of child molestation and intention to turn himself in to the police by waiting for them at the nearest McDonalds.<\/p>\n I didn’t know either of these people, but I know people who do. Or did. I expect a fair number of Living Freedom readers were familiar with one or the other. At first Spangler’s friends hoped his confession was a terrible joke perpetrated against Spangler, a hack of his page, a complete fraud. Tom Knapp still advises caution<\/a> before judging because facts may be different than they seem. But everybody seems gradually to be accepting that their friend has really sunk into some kind of pit of his own making. <\/p>\n Here’s a take from someone who is trying to balance, but is generally kind and favorable<\/a>. Here’s a take (and a full screen shot of the confession) from someone not inclined to give a break<\/a>.<\/p>\n I must admit though the message was very strange and seemingly written by someone not quite in his right mind, it did read like something a daughter-molester would write. Self-justification and self pity; not a mention of what the child will have to live with forever.<\/p>\n And Crowley. That was weird. How isolated that young family must have been that they could be slaughtered right before Christmas<\/a> and nobody would even get curious until January 17. The tubz are abuzz with theories that the CIA or some other nefarious force killed the family to prevent the film being released. But Crowley had already told people the project was dead. Anyhow, that wasn’t a healthy home; imagine any young family including a small child that goes unnoticed for weeks at Christmastime. There were also apparently money troubles. Substance abuses.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n Well, that was a downer. I’m sorry. But I think there’s going to be a lot of comment on both Crowley and Spangler for a long time to come.<\/p>\n