12/13/2025

 Saturday, December 13, 2025

1545 The Council of Trent was opened by Pope Paul III

2024 The conspiracy theory that undercover FBI agents were part of the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6 was determined to be unfounded according to a  report by the DOJ inspector general.

In bed at 9, up at 5:25.  3°, wind chill -12°, high 23°, low -2°

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 8ish a.m.  

Our patio and backyard have been like this since November 29th

Winter Morning

BY JAMES CREWS

When I can no longer say thank you

for this new day and the waking into it,

for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair

and the ticking of the space heater glowing

orange as it warms the floor near my feet,

I know it’s because I’ve been fooled again

by the selfish, unruly man who lives in me

and believes he deserves only safety

and comfort. But if I pause as I do now,

and watch the streetlights outside flashing

off one by one like old men blinking their

cloudy eyes, if I listen to my tired neighbors

slamming car doors hard against the morning

and see the steaming coffee in their mugs

kissing chapped lips as they sip and

exhale each of their worries white into

the icy air around their faces—then I can

remember this one life is a gift each of us

was handed and told to open: Untie the bow

and tear off the paper, look inside

and be grateful for whatever you find

even if it is only the scent of a tangerine

that lingers on the fingers long after

you’ve finished peeling it.

I like this poem, especially the recognition of "the selfish, unruly man who lives in me / and believes he deserves only safety / and comfort" and its thought that, for most of us at least, "life is a gift . . . be grateful for whatever you find", though I try never to forget Wiliam Blake's truth that "Some are born to sweet delight and some are born to endless night."

Those Winter Sundays

BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

I am very fond of this poem which I first discovered in Garrison Keillor's anthology of Good Poems.  It so concretely reminds us that love is an action verb, that to love is to act lovingly, not simply to have a feeling of affection, attraction, or emotion.  It's helping the loved one move along through 'the vale of tears' that is life.  The poet was an African-American who was adopted by a stern, Baptist workingman and his wife and it's clear the home was not a cheerful place, but a place of  fears from "chronic angers."  It doesn't appear that there was a lot of verbal communication between the boy and his father either, or of real time appreciation for the father's steady, steady, seven days a week, love for the boy shown by going to work to provide a home for him, by stoking the furnace each morning during winters, and by shining his shoes for school.  No one ever thanked him for his loving acts and it was only later that the poet came to appreciate how his father loved him, silently, by keeping him warm and polishing his good shoes.  The poem reminds me of course of my childhood home and of my longsuffering father, who caused such suffering in us.  The family motto, or at least my father's, was "The less said, the better," I suppose it should remind me more of his father, my Grandpa Dewey, who sustained him and my Aunt Monica through their journeys through their 'vale of tears.'  I think of all those fraught relationships in my family during my childhood as I read the concluding couplet:  

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

I think too of the Salve, Regina, we all grew up with and lived with, sung like a dirge:

Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, / our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

To you do we cry, / poor banished children of Eve.

To you do we send up our sighs, /mourning and weeping / in this vale of tears.

Turn then, most gracious advocate, / your eyes of mercy toward us,

and after this our exile / show unto us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus.

O clement, / O loving, / O sweet Virgin Mary. 

O, those days of Irish Catholic conditioning!  We are tatooed in our cradles . . .

 Major progress in basement after one week of work.  

Phase 1 of the project was getting rid of the water on August 10.  Phase 2 was removing the wet drywall and the vinyl flooring, wet door jambs.  Phase 3 was removing the asbestos floor tiles.   All that had to be completed before Chris started replacing the drywall, chair rails and floor molding, door jambs, painting and staining them, and laying new flooring.  Big Rain -August 9, recovery to be complete on December 18.  Total loss/costs > $20,000.  Insurance coverage $10,000.