COULD BE, THOUGH

Wednesday, 8:45 AM.  22 degrees F, wind W, calm at ground level with gray, sometimes rosy-gray clouds moving rather quickly from the west at a moderate height.  There is a considerable patch of blue sky on the NNE horizon but the sun is rising through silver-lined dark clouds in the SE.  The barometer predicts snow, which we got another couple of inches of late  yesterday afternoon and which I scraped off the driveway this morning.  It is a very quiet morning in Bayfield.
        Reader Doug Peterson of Charlotte, NC recently put me on to the writings of G. K. Chesterton, whom I had never read.  It must have  been some minor act of fate when I found a new reprint of his “The Man Who Was Thursday,” at the What Goes Round bookstore in town a few days ago.  It is even published in large print, which of course I don’t need, but may be useful to some of my elderly friends as it gets passed around.  I was enthralled by this book which at times is uproariously funny (I haven’t laughed like that in years)  and at other times deeply philosophical and religious.  Thanks, Doug.  He also sent a photo of his eleven year old granddaughter and the eleven point buck she shot this fall in Louisiana. Ah, youth!
        I also thank Bayfield reader Heidi Nelson for her immediate and generous response to our Tree Board resolution regarding trees for Rittenhouse Ave. in downtown Bayfield.  She sent a check for $100 towards a tree fund to Mayor Larry MacDonald, with a note saying she remembers years ago when the Avenue had magnificent old sugar maples that shaded the street and lit up the town with their fall colors.  That can’t be too long ago, as I consider her still just a kid.
        I often wonder who reads my scribbles and why they would do so.  It gives me considerable gratification when I find out. 
        Hundreds of tundra swans are still on the bay in Ashland, scattered about, and bobbing on the waves like blobs of ice.  It is hilarious to see these huge birds tip up their bottoms into the air as they crane their long necks down into the water feeding on vegetation that is rooted in the shallows.  It has occurred to me that they perhaps are mooning us humans (and me in particular) for that is what it looks like, but I don’t know why they would bother to do that.  Could be, though.
        We head to Madison tomorrow for an Urban Forestry Council meeting on Friday, so no blog for a day or two. Hope the roads are O.K.