DaNews in Depew

Brrr.
My fingers, having forgotten the temperature of a few months ago, are ice cubes on this chilly May day. (And, yes, I consider that news. My fingers are very important to me.)

In several days, we expect a visit from a rototiller. Soon this blog will overflow with dull and dirty pictures. (Garden dirt, of course.)

I just started another reading of Till We Have Faces last night, a week later than I intended. It's been a few years since I read it last, and the opening paragraphs snagged me as neatly as they did the very first time I opened it.

I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of the gods. I have no husband or child, nor hardly a friend, through whom they can hurt me. My body, this lean carrion that still has to be washed and fed and have clothes hung about it daily with so many changes, they may kill as soon as they please. The succession is provided for. My crown passes to my nephew.

Being, for all these reasons, free from fear, I will write in this book what no one who has happiness would dare to write. I will accuse the gods, especially the god who lives on the Grey Mountain. That is, I will tell all he has done to me from the very beginnning, as if I were making my complaint of him before a judge. But there is no judge between gods and men, and the god of the mountain will not answer me. Terrors and plagues are not an answer.

If I read it as much as I'd like, I'd finish by tonight, but I'll probably have to move through it slowly in the evenings. Night light. If it weren't for electric light, I probably would have started many a blaze through negligent night-time reading. (Imagine taking a lantern or candlestick under the covers. By the age of 12, I would have been scored with burn scars.) I do like the softness of candlelight, though.

Without further ado, here are a few......

snapshots.

(Surprise, surprise.)