The end of another school break is looming. Looking back at the week, I realize that I've spent quite a bit of time reading, especially during a short stay in Branson with my sister's family. I took along a stack of magazines to catch up on, some dating as far back as May, as well as a couple of books. The magazines were all, in fact, my beloved Newsweek, which recently announced that it would be no longer produce print copies after the end of this year, to my horror. Truly, I felt as if a good friend were dying. Though it will live on in digital form, I don't plan on renewing my subscription. Reading a magazine is meant to be a tactile, mobile experience. And no, I don't have a laptop or Ipad. I prefer my reliable desktop. So goodbye, Newsweek.
I've heard "Print is dead" as far back as one of my favorite movies, The Big Chill, using the line in the early 80's. I couldn't understand why anyone would say such a thing then---but I was in the middle of earning a couple of degrees in English at that time. The politics of media not only were of no interest to me; I didn't in the least understand it all then. Even now, I'd be hard pressed to articulate the issues. I just knew that I loved books, as did a fair number of people in the world, so how could print ever be dead? I just blew it off as some self-important Hollywood posturing. Today I wonder if they knew how prophetic that line would be. Thirty years of home technology have made it a virtual certainty.
When e-readers arrived on the scene, I reacted on a gut level....literally. My stomach would clench up like a street fighter ready to take all comers at the very mention of a Kindle, and I would make the same silly statement each time: "They'll pry my books from my cold, dead hands!" Melodramatic much? Well, yes. But it was no less heartfelt for being so....cliche. If anyone was willing to listen, I would try to appeal to the sensory pleasure of reading: the weight of the book, the smell of the pages, the sound of turning each page in anticipation while reading in my grandmother's lap, or alone in a quiet house, or in front of a fire, or up in my dry, hot summer bedroom in the South Dakota house. All my life, I've never been far from the comfort of a book I was reading, and the thought of not having one to retreat to is, to say the least, unnerving.
Yet some of my friends who are devoted bibliophiles have converted to e-readers, up to and including our semi-retired school librarian, who will extol the virtues of books at any time, but who is no snob when it comes to technology, either. She encouraged me for years to listen to audiobooks on my commute and has been working on my attitude toward e-readers for quite some time now. She knows my objections....and also where to hit me so it counts, having recently pointed out that I can have thousands of books on a reader, but I can only carry around so many at a time. Ha: my rotator-cuff-cranky right shoulder can't manage the giant purses I used to carry around, stuffed with junk and at least one or two books. Yes, Joan knew that the book-glutton brain I function with would sparkle with excitement at the idea of having any book I wanted on my person at any time.
Still, I can't see how we benefit as a society without hard copy books. Even my students know that. In the last couple of years, it has become apparent that eventually school textbooks are going to be viewed as insupportable and completely cost-ineffective compared to on-line textbooks. They'll become dinosaurs; it's just a matter of when. Our administration has been pushing in that direction for a couple of years, and I've voiced my opinion many times about what a bad choice I believe it to be. This fall, they asked us to review some new free/low-cost on-line books and to feel out how the students viewed the idea. I didn't even get a chance to bring up the discussion; that very morning in my first class, one girl mentioned off-handedly that she didn't like reading on-line (I think it was regarding a little research project they were doing), and when I asked them about the idea of on-line texts as a follow-up, they practically shouted me down. According to them, they couldn't see as well on a computer, it was harder to read for a longer period of time, and many of them don't have internet access at home. You can imagine that I was gratified by their response.....especially so, since I found five errors in the very first sample sentence I read in the grammar text, proving another cliched adage: You get what you pay for.
With all that said, I must make a confession. I noted I had issues of Newsweek to read going as far back as May, although in truth, it was just one random copy that somehow got thrown aside and overlooked. Most were from the last three months, maybe five issues. With the up-to-the-minute reporting it's known for, you might wonder why, if the mag is so important to me, I had them piled up like that. Yes, I'm busy, but I do have maybe an hour or so an evening when I could be reading. Why don't I read them then? Oh, well....it's because.....I'm usually on the computer, or maybe watching a show I DVRed earlier.
That's right. The e-reader snob doesn't read anymore because she's spending her time with technology.
And the reason I WAS reading this week (though I didn't realize it until later)? I was away from home....and my computer.....and my DVR. I fell back on my print habit because I had no technology.
Ironic? Yes. But at least I learned the meaning of irony by reading books: gloriously heavy books full of pages and inky words and that dusty feel of the paper, the smell of libraries and coffee and cigarettes faintly tracing the margins, the crinkling onion skin or sandpapery heavyweight deckle edge replying to our thoughts at each turn of the page. That's reading; that's a book.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Enough
Like many of you, I've been trying to focus on gratitude this month. I try to live my life by that standard, but too often I slip into cranky, snarky, tired, jealous, or down-right mean. So do we all, I suppose, but I want to believe that most everyone tries to be their best selves the majority of the time. All I can really do is to try to hold myself to that standard without being a self-congratulatory twit.
The gratitude posts on Facebook, which I'm doing for the first time (at least, I think so---I don't remember doing them before), have had me thinking about my concept of gratitude when I was younger. My siblings and I were not handed a lot of material stuff, because we had some very, very wise parents. We had all we needed and some things we wanted, but by no means everything. I don't recall ever feeling that I was deprived. But like most kids, I had a few things that were perennially on my list of burning desires in life.
My number one was not the same as most little girls' number one dream; I did want a horse, but it was not at the top. What I really craved was a pool, preferably an indoor one so that I could swim year-round. I simply loved the water from my earliest memories. This wish held on so long, however tenuously, that when my mother called me up before Christmas about 12 years ago and told me to bring my swimsuit with me when I came home, I lost it for a minute, accusing her of fulfilling my heartfelt desire nearly 20 years after I left home.....before I came to my senses and said, "You got a hot tub, right?" Right. And that was great for them, great with me. That little-girl fantasy would always be firmly in the realm of fantasy. Yet there was more to it than that. I never had that pool at my disposal---but I probably swam in more than half of the man-made lakes west of the Mississippi, all of the three ocean borders of our country, a wide variety of streams and rivers, and dozens of snow-melt lakes in the American and Canadian west/northwest, because the one great luxury my parents did believe in for us was the benefit of travel. All those trips would have, no doubt, paid for a pool a few times over. But I had more natural pools than one could ever wish for---and that was enough.
There's no doubt in my mind that I owned store-bought clothes when I was a kid, but I don't recall getting a store-bought dress until I was about 10. I remember picking out a church dress, maybe for Easter, from the Montgomery Ward catalog: an apricot dress with a yoke in front outlined in white lace, with a white Peter Pan collar. Why does this make such an impression? Because I had a seamstress mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother who were geniuses at their crafts. My grandmother even worked in the field professionally at the Cherokee Togs factory in Pryor for more than 30 years. Having homemade clothes was not that unusual then, but they did go beyond the pale. My three older cousins and I, if memory serves, all had matching quilted coats that Grandma sewed for us from leftover scrap material from the factory. She and my great-grandma pieced quilt tops and hand-quilted the quilts; only they would have had any idea of how many they might have done, but it was enough that Grandma's two children and all seven grandchildren had many quilts apiece. I don't think I ever felt any remorse about having homemade clothing, but I surely didn't act properly grateful. Those clothes, coats, covers, all were things I took for granted then---and they were enough.
To my child's mind, there was only ever one profession that lay down the road for me: I would be a country-western singer. I literally cannot remember ever NOT wanting to be a singer. When we kids would sing little songs for the congregation on Sundays at church, even before I was in school, I would be looking for a way to stand out so I could sing by myself a little. I truly don't remember if that was consciously borne out or if I started singing first and got attention for it, so I played it up. But I was up there singing my little attention-monger heart out, more and more on my own as I got older. That I wasn't really good enough to be professional was probably in the back of my mind as I hit high school. but I could still dream. When college arrived and a more practical plan had to be put into place, through a convoluted and absolutely nonsensical series of judgments, I wound up in education. It wasn't clear to me until I stepped into that first classroom that my stage was set, waiting there all along. It was not at all what I was expecting---but it was enough.
They say the key to being happy in life is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. I say, that is simple, everyday gratitude, a most essential part of being both happy and useful in the world. I know that having what I want is not always feasible, but wanting what I have---being aware of, and gracious about, the gifts life has given me---is enough. It's more than enough.
The gratitude posts on Facebook, which I'm doing for the first time (at least, I think so---I don't remember doing them before), have had me thinking about my concept of gratitude when I was younger. My siblings and I were not handed a lot of material stuff, because we had some very, very wise parents. We had all we needed and some things we wanted, but by no means everything. I don't recall ever feeling that I was deprived. But like most kids, I had a few things that were perennially on my list of burning desires in life.
My number one was not the same as most little girls' number one dream; I did want a horse, but it was not at the top. What I really craved was a pool, preferably an indoor one so that I could swim year-round. I simply loved the water from my earliest memories. This wish held on so long, however tenuously, that when my mother called me up before Christmas about 12 years ago and told me to bring my swimsuit with me when I came home, I lost it for a minute, accusing her of fulfilling my heartfelt desire nearly 20 years after I left home.....before I came to my senses and said, "You got a hot tub, right?" Right. And that was great for them, great with me. That little-girl fantasy would always be firmly in the realm of fantasy. Yet there was more to it than that. I never had that pool at my disposal---but I probably swam in more than half of the man-made lakes west of the Mississippi, all of the three ocean borders of our country, a wide variety of streams and rivers, and dozens of snow-melt lakes in the American and Canadian west/northwest, because the one great luxury my parents did believe in for us was the benefit of travel. All those trips would have, no doubt, paid for a pool a few times over. But I had more natural pools than one could ever wish for---and that was enough.
There's no doubt in my mind that I owned store-bought clothes when I was a kid, but I don't recall getting a store-bought dress until I was about 10. I remember picking out a church dress, maybe for Easter, from the Montgomery Ward catalog: an apricot dress with a yoke in front outlined in white lace, with a white Peter Pan collar. Why does this make such an impression? Because I had a seamstress mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother who were geniuses at their crafts. My grandmother even worked in the field professionally at the Cherokee Togs factory in Pryor for more than 30 years. Having homemade clothes was not that unusual then, but they did go beyond the pale. My three older cousins and I, if memory serves, all had matching quilted coats that Grandma sewed for us from leftover scrap material from the factory. She and my great-grandma pieced quilt tops and hand-quilted the quilts; only they would have had any idea of how many they might have done, but it was enough that Grandma's two children and all seven grandchildren had many quilts apiece. I don't think I ever felt any remorse about having homemade clothing, but I surely didn't act properly grateful. Those clothes, coats, covers, all were things I took for granted then---and they were enough.
To my child's mind, there was only ever one profession that lay down the road for me: I would be a country-western singer. I literally cannot remember ever NOT wanting to be a singer. When we kids would sing little songs for the congregation on Sundays at church, even before I was in school, I would be looking for a way to stand out so I could sing by myself a little. I truly don't remember if that was consciously borne out or if I started singing first and got attention for it, so I played it up. But I was up there singing my little attention-monger heart out, more and more on my own as I got older. That I wasn't really good enough to be professional was probably in the back of my mind as I hit high school. but I could still dream. When college arrived and a more practical plan had to be put into place, through a convoluted and absolutely nonsensical series of judgments, I wound up in education. It wasn't clear to me until I stepped into that first classroom that my stage was set, waiting there all along. It was not at all what I was expecting---but it was enough.
They say the key to being happy in life is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. I say, that is simple, everyday gratitude, a most essential part of being both happy and useful in the world. I know that having what I want is not always feasible, but wanting what I have---being aware of, and gracious about, the gifts life has given me---is enough. It's more than enough.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
S.P.I.C.E. It Up
This afternoon, a few lines from a poem I love, "Barter" by Sara Teasdale, went tripping through my head: "Life has loveliness to sell/
All beautiful and
splendid things/ Blue waves whitened on a
cliff/ Soaring fire that sways
and sings...Music like a curve of
gold/ Scent of pine trees in the
rain/ Eyes that love you, arms
that hold..." Oh, you could argue that it's not great poetry, but I disagree, and it often runs through my mind on days like today. I was watching the burnished red Bradford leaves out my dining room windows as I was grading essays, marveling that even in this infernal, endless Oklahoma wind that I dislike so much, there is something to be pleased by: the sight of those shiny leaves tenaciously clinging to the branches, performing a whirling-dervish dance goodbye---bartering for a little more time in their short lives. That's the very thing Teasdale was encouraging.
But then I also thought of what was ahead for my evening: the yearly S.P.I.C.E auction in Locust Grove. Special Partners in Children's Education is a local foundation that our community formed about 16 years ago to support the four schools in the LG district. Specifically, they raise money and award grants to teachers each semester. I know that there are foundations of this sort in many communities, and certainly the cities have them---I wouldn't have been fortunate enough to receive my Fund for Teachers grant three years ago if not for the Tulsa community foundation. But I can't help feeling amazed at what this group does in our rural town with limited local businesses.
Every fall, the S.P.I.C.E. auction is held on a Saturday evening, featuring a dinner and a dessert contest for starters. The auction always has a theme, and table decorating contests help take the burden for decorating off the foundation and add to the fun. Donated items are offered in both a silent auction and a live auction. The live auction items are much too big for me to bid on: chainsaws, SEC game tickets, Reba tickets, huge themed baskets, toolboxes, small furnishings or large home decor items. But I usually get something in the silent auction; last year it was a massage from Stacy, my usual massage therapist. I've gotten a book basket before, and tonight I won a custom bling t-shirt (I've been coveting that for a while now). I've been fortunate to benefit from S.P.I.C.E. grants several times for technology, and just last year, Robin Pendergraft and I received a large grant to purchase new MLA books for the juniors and seniors. It's safe to say that our schools would be much less advanced without the hard work that all these local volunteers do.
But what does it really add up to? How does $17,000 sound? That's how much was awarded just tonight, every cent of it RAISED by this foundation, every cent going directly to classrooms and students---no administrative costs, no salaries. Every grant award was given to a teacher who went proudly up to pick up the award letter that will advance his or her classroom. I knew almost all of them, and had taught at least one, so I feel safe in saying that that money is in good hands, open hands poised to do just a little more, just a little better, for the children they teach.
In the spring, a similar round of grants will be awarded; the average per semester is about $15,000, the last that I heard. That means the total dollar amount raised and awarded over the years is in the hundreds of thousands by now---I don't know an exact amount, but, gosh! In a two-stoplight town, who would have expected it? And remember, there's no corporate grandaddy handing this out: it comes from a cafetorium full of teachers and community members who know that without a strong, progressive local school, there's no town left. Small towns don't let that kind of thing happen. We go have dinner together, razz each other about our bids, hoot and holler while Ronn auctions, circle the silent auction table like vultures at the last seconds, elbowing each other to get the last bid in, and stand in line to pay our bills, chatting about the recent election, who was the last victim of middle school principal Clint Hall's tricks, which building will win the contest for most teachers in attendance. And we applaud every teacher who goes forward to pick up those grants.
If that isn't loveliness, I don't know it. If it's not goodness, there is none to be found.
The last stanze of "Barter" is the best, and it's perfect for this evening's events:
But then I also thought of what was ahead for my evening: the yearly S.P.I.C.E auction in Locust Grove. Special Partners in Children's Education is a local foundation that our community formed about 16 years ago to support the four schools in the LG district. Specifically, they raise money and award grants to teachers each semester. I know that there are foundations of this sort in many communities, and certainly the cities have them---I wouldn't have been fortunate enough to receive my Fund for Teachers grant three years ago if not for the Tulsa community foundation. But I can't help feeling amazed at what this group does in our rural town with limited local businesses.
Every fall, the S.P.I.C.E. auction is held on a Saturday evening, featuring a dinner and a dessert contest for starters. The auction always has a theme, and table decorating contests help take the burden for decorating off the foundation and add to the fun. Donated items are offered in both a silent auction and a live auction. The live auction items are much too big for me to bid on: chainsaws, SEC game tickets, Reba tickets, huge themed baskets, toolboxes, small furnishings or large home decor items. But I usually get something in the silent auction; last year it was a massage from Stacy, my usual massage therapist. I've gotten a book basket before, and tonight I won a custom bling t-shirt (I've been coveting that for a while now). I've been fortunate to benefit from S.P.I.C.E. grants several times for technology, and just last year, Robin Pendergraft and I received a large grant to purchase new MLA books for the juniors and seniors. It's safe to say that our schools would be much less advanced without the hard work that all these local volunteers do.
But what does it really add up to? How does $17,000 sound? That's how much was awarded just tonight, every cent of it RAISED by this foundation, every cent going directly to classrooms and students---no administrative costs, no salaries. Every grant award was given to a teacher who went proudly up to pick up the award letter that will advance his or her classroom. I knew almost all of them, and had taught at least one, so I feel safe in saying that that money is in good hands, open hands poised to do just a little more, just a little better, for the children they teach.
In the spring, a similar round of grants will be awarded; the average per semester is about $15,000, the last that I heard. That means the total dollar amount raised and awarded over the years is in the hundreds of thousands by now---I don't know an exact amount, but, gosh! In a two-stoplight town, who would have expected it? And remember, there's no corporate grandaddy handing this out: it comes from a cafetorium full of teachers and community members who know that without a strong, progressive local school, there's no town left. Small towns don't let that kind of thing happen. We go have dinner together, razz each other about our bids, hoot and holler while Ronn auctions, circle the silent auction table like vultures at the last seconds, elbowing each other to get the last bid in, and stand in line to pay our bills, chatting about the recent election, who was the last victim of middle school principal Clint Hall's tricks, which building will win the contest for most teachers in attendance. And we applaud every teacher who goes forward to pick up those grants.
If that isn't loveliness, I don't know it. If it's not goodness, there is none to be found.
The last stanze of "Barter" is the best, and it's perfect for this evening's events:
"Spend all you have for
loveliness,
Buy it and never count
the cost;
For one white singing hour of
peace
Count many a year of
strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or
could be. "
A little too feverish, perhaps, but simply put: Invest in whatever it is that you love, and don't look
back. How fortunate I am to work in a place where there are people who understand the power and
joy of investing in young people, making their educational experience the best it can be. That they
are willing to work so hard, to "Barter" for the betterment of many, many children that they may
never know, is a loveliness almost too beautiful to comprehend.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Time Again
You can tell me the truth, kiddoes---you hate this night. You know: Fall Back. It doesn't matter to most people that we gain an extra blessed hour of sleep tonight. It's giving up an hour of precious daylight at the end of every day for the next four months that puts so many in ill humor. I'll confess; I love it---it suits the dark side of my nature. I was actually mad when they pushed it back until after the first of November a couple of years ago. But I know you're (mostly) sane out there, not given to late nights and sad songs like me. For you on the sunny side, let me give you a few reasons to like the evening a little better this season.
First, you have a good reason to settle in at home with your people a little earlier, to enjoy evenings over a family dinner (nearly unheard of these days, and so strange to me---we grew up eating all our meals together). There's actually time after dinner to sit down and watch a movie or play games together, even on a weeknight. You could even bring back family reading, sharing a big book that you read to your kids or they read with you. I've been reading all my life, but one of the most enjoyable experiences I had as an 11-year-old was when Vonnie Robbins read Treasure Island to her daughters and me over several evenings one summer. You think your kids won't appreciate it? They might not, not today, anyway. Soon, yes. Soon, a once-a-week family evening will become a part of their own family fabric, and you've started to reshape the broken landscape of what made our lives seem so much better when we were kids. What a gift to give our children!
What do you do with those dark hours if you have no kids at home? Turn off the TV and talk to your "other." Ask the kinds of questions that can lead a discussion in a million different directions. Better yet, do a little project or take a class together that keeps the brain active and the heart open. It doesn't really matter, as long as you're spending the time together. Why is this so hard for so many couples anymore? Ah---it's all those daylight hours when everyone gets out to do things in the evening time that families used to spend together---games, shopping parties, drinking, whatever-it-is that people get up to, then wonder why their relationships fall apart. Well, here it is: the four month challenge to save your marriage. Not that I know a damn thing about marriage, but common sense says, if you spend those evenings together this winter learning more about yourselves together, instead of chasing your own interests all-l-l the time, you're more likely to fall together than fall apart.
I can only really speak knowledgeably about family time and alone time. As a single person living alone, far from hating more evening in the winter, I love it. It does make it a little harder to get around in the evening after the gym and drive home from Pryor to BA, but that's a small price to pay for the extra-relaxed time when I get there. Instead of rushing around feeling like I've got to beat the sunset to get things done, that moment has passed before I even get out of the pool. I can get home, eat a quick dinner, and be hunkered down for a little reading or TV and therefore ready to sleep when it's bedtime. I have a hard time winding down most longer days, but not so much this time of year. Even better, on the nights I don't go to class, I have a long evening for reading or movie watching or researching/playing on the computer. If I go out to meet friends for dinner, most of us are comfortable to relax for a good visit---no one rushing to get home and work in the yard or finish up some project. There's NO time that I have trouble filling; even when we were snowed in for two weeks in the 2011 blizzard, I was perfectly content at home alone. It's always completely mystified me how people can get bored. There is SO MUCH to read, to learn, to see, and the computer is the window into anyplace or anything we want to get to anymore.
What I love best about early evenings in the winter is a weekend, preferably cloudy, cold, and windy, when I can cook something all day in the crock pot while I grade papers, and about dark, pack things up for the day, and maybe do a little writing, journaling or otherwise, that will lead me into something new---a new idea for school, a memory I want to record that I'd forgotten, a fresh poetic phrase to save up for inspiration down the line.
Probably you won't be inspired by the darkness the same way I am, but there are good things to be gained from these longer, colder evenings in front of the fire or under a lap quilt. Put your shoulders back and breathe deeply, letting it settle you, if only for a while. If it doesn't sit well, remember that it's only four short months until you can play beat the clock every evening again, squeezing out every ounce of sweetness from that evening sun.
First, you have a good reason to settle in at home with your people a little earlier, to enjoy evenings over a family dinner (nearly unheard of these days, and so strange to me---we grew up eating all our meals together). There's actually time after dinner to sit down and watch a movie or play games together, even on a weeknight. You could even bring back family reading, sharing a big book that you read to your kids or they read with you. I've been reading all my life, but one of the most enjoyable experiences I had as an 11-year-old was when Vonnie Robbins read Treasure Island to her daughters and me over several evenings one summer. You think your kids won't appreciate it? They might not, not today, anyway. Soon, yes. Soon, a once-a-week family evening will become a part of their own family fabric, and you've started to reshape the broken landscape of what made our lives seem so much better when we were kids. What a gift to give our children!
What do you do with those dark hours if you have no kids at home? Turn off the TV and talk to your "other." Ask the kinds of questions that can lead a discussion in a million different directions. Better yet, do a little project or take a class together that keeps the brain active and the heart open. It doesn't really matter, as long as you're spending the time together. Why is this so hard for so many couples anymore? Ah---it's all those daylight hours when everyone gets out to do things in the evening time that families used to spend together---games, shopping parties, drinking, whatever-it-is that people get up to, then wonder why their relationships fall apart. Well, here it is: the four month challenge to save your marriage. Not that I know a damn thing about marriage, but common sense says, if you spend those evenings together this winter learning more about yourselves together, instead of chasing your own interests all-l-l the time, you're more likely to fall together than fall apart.
I can only really speak knowledgeably about family time and alone time. As a single person living alone, far from hating more evening in the winter, I love it. It does make it a little harder to get around in the evening after the gym and drive home from Pryor to BA, but that's a small price to pay for the extra-relaxed time when I get there. Instead of rushing around feeling like I've got to beat the sunset to get things done, that moment has passed before I even get out of the pool. I can get home, eat a quick dinner, and be hunkered down for a little reading or TV and therefore ready to sleep when it's bedtime. I have a hard time winding down most longer days, but not so much this time of year. Even better, on the nights I don't go to class, I have a long evening for reading or movie watching or researching/playing on the computer. If I go out to meet friends for dinner, most of us are comfortable to relax for a good visit---no one rushing to get home and work in the yard or finish up some project. There's NO time that I have trouble filling; even when we were snowed in for two weeks in the 2011 blizzard, I was perfectly content at home alone. It's always completely mystified me how people can get bored. There is SO MUCH to read, to learn, to see, and the computer is the window into anyplace or anything we want to get to anymore.
What I love best about early evenings in the winter is a weekend, preferably cloudy, cold, and windy, when I can cook something all day in the crock pot while I grade papers, and about dark, pack things up for the day, and maybe do a little writing, journaling or otherwise, that will lead me into something new---a new idea for school, a memory I want to record that I'd forgotten, a fresh poetic phrase to save up for inspiration down the line.
Probably you won't be inspired by the darkness the same way I am, but there are good things to be gained from these longer, colder evenings in front of the fire or under a lap quilt. Put your shoulders back and breathe deeply, letting it settle you, if only for a while. If it doesn't sit well, remember that it's only four short months until you can play beat the clock every evening again, squeezing out every ounce of sweetness from that evening sun.
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