Sometimes you have neighbors who help clear the whole neighborhood of snow. Sometimes you have people-who-live-in-the-neighborhood who clear a path from their front door to their car.
Matt Stansberry asks, “What does success look like in this situation?” For me, one measure will be that I do not close my heart to the suffering around me in a vain attempt at self-preservation. I will neither bathe myself in it, nor turn away from it. I will keep pursuing the hard path of love.
A bit of hope. Our kids will be better prepared to build something better after these next few awful years have passed.
Thinking about the fact that when Beatrix started at her current school in 6th grade, a few months into school Covid happened. Now, a few months into her senior year, this siege is happening.
These kids are going to be prepared for anything.
A lot of places are closed today, including the credit union’s branches. I’ll be working remotely. Temperatures will be in the single digits F. So much snow. Bless all those folks working to clear roads and get everyone back up and running.
As of 6am, we had ten inches. More is supposed to be on the way throughout the day. Good news: it is very light, dry snow. Easy to shovel.
One of the southern Indiana electric companies asked people to conserve energy over the next couple of days to prevent outages. The comments are full of people telling them to turn off the data centers and I love it.
Patience in the face of a snowstorm
In The Amish Way, the authors describe patience as one of the key characteristics of Amish life. The lessons of patience are built into the structures of their lives—even the church services are three hours long, with one twenty-minute hymn that always precedes the preaching. I will admit to a certain amount of anxiety as we await the huge snowstorm to hit here. We’ve lived through worse, to be sure. Last night we were remembering one storm that hit early in our marriage.
A one-person protest
“The Real Reasons Your Appliances Die Young,” via @isaacgreene. It’s not just planned obsolescence. It’s also government regulations aimed a lower energy efficiency people just wanting something new price wars the inevitable breakage that comes with higher technology The writer also says that useful lives of appliances may not have decreased as much as you’d expect. Her advice if you want repairability and durability is either go dirt cheap or high end.
Grown in the Hoosier hill country
There’s a turn of phrase in Colter Wall’s “1800 Miles”: “we don’t got these kinds of cliques where I was grown.” We don’t normally talk about humans being “grown.” Maybe we should? Tell me about your terroir. Because I have never separated myself from my home neighborhood, I cannot identify myself to myself apart from it. I am fairly literally flesh of its flesh. It is present in me, and to me, wherever I go.
Farewell, Joe
Today we’ll be burying Rachel’s grandpa Joe. With his death, all of our grandparents are gone. Rachel said this week, “Everyone moves up a notch in the pecking order now.” Joe had an enviable death. He was visiting with Rachel’s dad and another friend of his. It had been a really good day. He had been looking at the calendar of day trips put on by his assisted living facility, planning to go on one.