Sweetheart has gone to retrieve books at the faraway cottage on snowshoes. Books for customers. Snowshoes to get to & fro. Beat down the trail. When I go out to do all the trails — around the house, to the studio, and through the woodlot (pick up more logs), I'll take a spin and do the faraway cottage trail as well.
"Do you want any cookies baked?"
"Why?"
"Ah, the weather's so bleak."
She's right. It may take a few cookies to get us into March.
I've lost count of the days now and am about to give up on the weather map for the first time in years — it's just going to snow some more, then weeks on end of mud. That's the weather report. We hand shoveled the long driveway three times since Friday. Maybe 16 inches of snow over the three days. The snow banks are well over our heads.
Now to the important news: Natalie Portman looked by far the finest, and radiant, at the Independent Film Spirit Awards last night. Nothing in the world like an expectant mother. Dale Dickie from Winter's Bone appeared quite taken and humble on the announcement of her winning, and John Hawkes well deserved his award as one scary and thin meth tooler also from Winter's Bone.
The Oscars will be watched by millions worldwide this evening, and I only hope they will likewise pay attention to the Oscar winners out in Wisconsin who are fighting for their work lives and home lives. It remains the Greatest Show on Earth. It may indicate just how fascist state these united states have become.
Perhaps go back and run a finger (as if through flour) across the time line and history since Ronald Reagan, through lying in Congress, to liars now in Congress, AIDS, homeless, the bogus air "attack" to America which has performed an excellent excuse for anytime and anywhere states of emergencies, clamp downs, search and seizures, torture, wiretaps, email snooping, and let's not forget world banks and finance (a great deal of it centered in NYC) over throwing governments of the people for governments of the all-mighty buck.
If you've got the bucks, you're included, if you don't (majority) you're out.
Political parties mean zilch. It's all down to what cash you hold and who you protect. It's boiled down to the working-class being treated like garbage by a vast minority who have never worked an honest working day in their lives.
This is paramount. It's what dreams are made of, whole libraries of books, folklore, old sayings, traditional songs worldwide, wisdom from grandparents and parents and the wily neighbor who always had a keen tidbit to offer your way.
Unions aren't perfect but they are people. Every dictator is a louse.
An Anthony Scalia on a Supreme Court is obviously not justice.
War criminals BushCheneyRumsfeld jetting around free and with book parties is obviously a hideous joke.
One fatcat in America making the income of 350,000 Americans is a something-is-awful-wrong-here moment.
People kept healthy and educated and warm through mutual support are stronger, sharper and willing.
And united. It's about time this country earned its name.
And the Oscar goes to the ground-breakers, the name makers.
