The Cold

Becky took this shot of box elder bugs working over a dead  wasp

As you probably remember both our furnaces blew up or burned last fall, in a series of disasters I don't ever want to see again.

Alan built a wonderful little coal boiler, but it didn't warm the house because of problems of which we were not aware, such as bent blades on the furnace fan, and explosion damage in places we couldn't see. Thus, although I tended it faithfully and learned all over again how to burn coal, it was a horrible, horrible winter, about the most demoralizing misery I have ever experienced.

We had the outdoor wood boiler refurbished and finally got it back in January. I can't describe to you the relief of not shivering. 

To this day there are problems with the system; we can't get heat to the peripheral rooms and the rest of the place is more than slightly chilly. Still, we are not in danger of freezing to death and that is easy to like.

However, a big topic of conversation here is the poor souls in NYC and NJ still impacted by hurricane damage. We had electricity. Although the little heaters that our wiring could sustain didn't do much they did something. I ran the shower every morning to let a little warm steam into the house and turned the electric oven on a few times a day to warm the kitchen a little.

We routinely work outdoors so we have warm clothing and know how to wear it. We learned long ago of the virtue of filling a two-liter soda bottle with hot water and tucking it inside your snuggly blankie when you are sitting in your refrigerated home.

In the city they have none of these things and probably do not have the clothing for the situation either. How are they surviving!?! They have no electricity and NO heat.

There are babies, elderly, sick and so on. Many of them don't have and can't by law have any way to protect themselves from "goblins", the looters, the bad people who will take advantage of their helplessness. At least we were and are armed.

The cold makes you sluggish and slows your brain and brings on fear and sadness. I pray that heat and light and comfort and safety are restored for our neighbors to the south, the sooner the better.