SURVIVAL ON A THREE-LEGGED MORNING

Tuesday, New Year’s morning. 9:00 AM.  04 degrees F, wind W, calm to very light.  Humidity 85%, barometer 30.25.  It is an honest morning, with a nip in the air and a squeak to the snow when walking.  It was a three-legged morning for Buddy; run, pick up a foot to warm it and run on three, and so on.  At dawn, roiling clouds of steam and fog rose from the waters between Bayfield and Madeline Island, at last in their turmoil vaulting and wisping away into the air like gray and silver ghosts.  It was like a scene out of a creation story.
    Fiscal cliff?  What fiscal cliff?  The nonsense continues.  We went to bed last night fearing for the fate of the country.  We awoke today with similar feelings but, it is a new day and a New Year, and hope, as they say, springs eternal.
    I am also encouraged by the knowledge that the country has survived worse and afterward thrived; I just finished reading Abigail and John, by Edith B. Gelles, the story of John Adams, the second president, and his wife as told through their correspondence.  It is a story not only of a personal relationship between a man and wife, but of their relationship with their country throughout its revolution and early years.  She was as much a patriot as he, and in many ways as influential.  The internal political battles and the scurrilous attacks of faction on faction and politician upon politician nearly tore the new nation asunder.  It was an ugly time, even uglier than the present.  But we survived.