American Elephants

What Covid has done, is make large numbers of us stay home as much as possible. I’m retired, so I don’t need to go out much, and make appointments only when really necessary. I really dislike being sequestered at home, but it seems to be wise. I have enough books to keep me reading for a great many years and rereading books is just fine as well, though there are limits!

Growing up in the mountains of Idaho left me starving for books. Our nearest town was 9 miles away, and a small town that had no library. Neither the grade school nor the high school had libraries. The town was a county seat, but the court house had no library either. Boise, the state capitol, had no public library. The capitol building had a very small State Traveling Library, and on the rare occasions when we went to Boise (100 miles away) I’d borrow the maximum number of books and send them back by train.Idaho, in those days, didn’t seem to be a major state for books and reading. Boise had two small department stores, but neither of them carried books. My aunt in Pittsburgh sent books for Christmas and birthdays, but there is a limit to how many times you can read the same book with pleasure. Consequently, I have a lot of books in the house, The computer age has brought some relief, but I don’t need to buy more books, I just need more books to read. Covid has kept me from going to our public library though we have several branch libraries.

What do you consider the best book you have ever read? What can you read many times with pleasure? There are some limits, when you get to know a book too well to be able to read it once more.

Looking South from my second-story window, it’s pretty smoky off in the distance to the South. I blame that entirely on fireplaces. Don’t have any idea to what extent people have wood stoves today. I suspect very few do. I grew up with fireplaces, wood stoves, and central heating was not even a vague option. We had a big woodshed, as our neighbors did as well. Electric heating or electric furnaces were not available. You chopped wood daily to keep the woodbox on the back porch full so you could cook and keep warm for another day. It was many years before Idaho Power built lines into our area. Pioneer living. City folk panic when the power goes out They don’t know how to deal with it.

Lots of blue sky and fluffy white clouds in this Seattle suburb. Just what we’ve been asking for. The farthest I can see from my second story window suggests slightly smoky air, which I blame on a lot of fires in neighborhood fireplaces, as there have been no fire trucks screaming up and down the main drag at the bottom of the hill. Traffic also seems mild. I think most everybody is more than ready for Spring. Warmer weather, blooms on trees and in gardens, change of seasons is very welcome in the Spring. Tired of rain and cold. Of course, this being a Seattle suburb, we are quite accustomed to rain. Doesn’t mean we like a lot of it. But we do have umbrellas, just in case.

I have lived in Seattle for over 50 years now. Before that. California, LA and Central Valley, the Peninsula and San Francisco. I am not fond of California, and given a choice would return immediately to Idaho or.Arizona, I wonder what percentage of Americans live in the state or the city where they want to be?

Very nice to have blue skies and fluffy white clouds. I still regard that as”normal.”