"A Time to Try the Soul of Men"

And women.

The Northeastern parts of the USA were coated by icy crystals before whom "who can stand." Philly had about 1/3 of an inch of ice that followed a wet snow. Outside the crackling of the ice on the trees would all too often be followed by the crack of limbs. Large piece of the Willow Tree that has longed to eat up my office came thudding down, shaking the office even though it hadn't hit it. A Black Cherry from next door came through the wooden fence, destroying Schreber Gate.

Ah, Schreber Gate. We got SchreberDog when he was a pup and he grew into sizable proportions and a chronic xenophobia that showed itself in antagonism to any previously-unmet visitors. We learned that a loaf of bread -- cheap bread was OK ... Schreber wasn't a fussy eater -- fed one slice at a time from whatever taxi delivered this stranger to the front door and Schreber would remember them, thereafter. Schreber came 37 years ago, not long before we moved into our home and my office.

This is all Old Man Talking and besides the point. SchreberDog loved to run ... err ... gallop. And the way our yard was set up, it was best to trellis part ... ah ... but that was part of Schreber's Circuit and would intrude on his free circuitry. Youngish Man to the rescue. A swinging trellace that was open on the bottom! "And everything was easy cause of youth." .... Well, not everything.

In any case, Schreber Gate is no more ... lying dead under the Cherry Tree just like tears ago the first pre-Geodesic swing set that I and the guys built for the younger sister was smooshed by a Norway Maple that went the way of all things.

Circuits and Cycles ... Health and Illness ... Life and Death.

The ice, I lie to myself, woulda been easier without the first arrhythmia in a year that has lasted more than 36 hours .... that easier without the "Feel like a watermelon about to be bashed by Gallagher" head-cold .... all easier if the Cherry Tree had held on just a little loner and if the Gas Company -- come supposedly to repair the leak at the 30' from the office gas meter -- hadn't checked the leak at the House Heater's Gas Valve down the basement.

Gas-man: Sir, I gotta shut'er down, unless'n you get a CONtractor in here before we leave.

My religion in large centers on the precepts of (1) not gratuitously causing another human Agata for doing their job and (2) giving others the presumption of good intentions in deciding where their footfalls land.

Dear God, described by David in Psalms (and Psalm 147, in particular, God!), I bow to you in thanks for not making mine one of the 600,000 households without heat or electricity in the days just past Penn's Sylvania. Curious, isn't it, that 600,000 or so was the number that purportedly broke their chains of servitude to Pharaoh in Egypt, took off for parts unknown, leaving a seaful of Pharaoh's armies drowning in the Sea of Reeds.

Wishin' Y'coulda saved Schreber Gate but understandin' that you must be pretty busy, these days, Yourself.