It happened this week:
The polar vortex expressed itself way down into and beyond the land of cotton. It was 21 degrees Tuesday morning in Destin, one of my favorite, and usually tropical, places.
But worse in the Windy City, where my nieces, Annie and Abby live. Wind chills were 40 below on that same day. KM and I were watching the news Monday night, and some kid in Minnesota stood at his back door with one of those giant water guns and he sprayed it onto his back deck. The stream crystallized in midair. Baby, it’s cold outside.
Here at the paper, we had three folks with frozen pipes. We kept things dripping at my abode in an attempt to keep the flow.
Having nothing to do with weather, freelance writer Eric Francis posted a wonderful story out of the New York Times Sunday Magazine titled, “A Speck in the Sea,” by Paul Tough. It tells the incredible tale of fisherman John Aldridge and the search for him after he fell off his boat, the Anna Mary, in the North Atlantic. Google and read; you won’t be sorry. After I did, my dreams of being a lobster fisherman drowned.
Stuck inside the homestead, much like the small family at the fictional Overlook Hotel I read about back in the mid-seventies, I started the new Stephen King novel, “Dr. Sleep.”
It begins with Danny Torrance, now Dan, he of the aforementioned Overlook, now all grown up and attempting to dull his Shine with cheap booze. An early quote from what so far has been a great read – “There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.”
Now into a hundred plus pages, I’m having trouble putting it away each night.
“The Shining” was the first book I read by King. I had joined the Book of the Month Club, and it was one of the four or five books I could get for 99 cents, just for signing up. Another was “The Hobbit.”
KM, a regular feature in this column as in my life, has lost 50 pounds in a little over a year. No, that’s not a typo. One of the nicest things I think anyone said to her might have come from her good friend Mr. Artie (that would be Professor Arthur Murphey for some of you former law students), who said, “I didn’t think you had 50 to lose.” Mr. Artie, if it wasn’t you who said it, my apologies. I can call him Mr. Artie, too, because I wasn’t fortunate enough to ever have him in class.
Mr. Artie was a favorite of the staff at St. Andrews Church when KM worked there. Women love to get flowers, and Mr. Artie, the consummate southern gentleman from Mississippi, knows that well. Mr. Artie is great to be around and a pretty cool conversationalist as well. How cool? His Facebook photo is a South Park rocket ship. Need I say more?
I changed this last paragraph from its original thoughts. I had, like so many others these days, taken a cheap shot at the Lt. Governor of Arkansas, Mark Darr, who most of you west of the Mississippi reading this have heard a lot about lately. I thought my comparison to the Toronto Mayor was pretty funny, but after thinking it over I had to back track. Mr. Darr has admitted to some mistakes and, while I know it goes against the talking heads and their legions of minions, I can’t help but admire the guy for standing his ground. I wish him well.
And yes, I’m still a Democrat.