Wake up Hank. It’s time to go out.

It’s raining.

These trees remind me of Game of Thrones.

This is not the Yellow Brick Road.

Craig and I spent two hours sanding our luge run of a driveway.

I stopped by Springfield College to drop off a flip chart for another Instructor. My flip chart about the Civil Rights movement had disappeared on campus and then re-emerged. This Instructor had seen the flip chart and was impressed. She has a special interest in the CR movement since her time as a Freedom Rider in the early 60’s I was flabbergasted to say the least that she wanted to borrow my flip chart. Also, it’s a flip chart. Not a power point presentation. I took a digital picture of each page just in case. While I was chatting with staff in the general office space, one of the Graduate Program Instructors stuck her head in the room and looked surprised to see me. We were just talking about you in my Project I class. The students were saying wonderful things about you. Then she started reminiscing about her admission’s interview nearly 14 years ago. She said that I had a puppy with me and talked about how the college did not celebrate Columbus Day. Howard Zinn described Columbus as a terrorist who had been given a narrative whitewash in traditional history books. Not so in The People’s History of the United States. I don’t remember that interview, but I do remember Sarah who is an extraordinary woman and leads an advocacy organization for people with disabilities. The puppy was Boomer who has since died. Of course anyone would want to attend a college that has a puppy hanging out during an interview.

Late morning in January

View from the back porch

Craig took the plow truck to work again. Freezing rain on top of snow made for dangerous driving conditions. I had big plans to attend the Saturday morning yoga class, gas up the car, stop at the post office and drop by the college campus. Instead, Hank and I did our driveway walk. I am staying in for the duration. Started artisan no-knead bread and leek, mushroom, onion soup.

The walk is generally an effective mind-soother. I start out reviewing annoying conversations from the day, moving forward into various to-do lists. It takes 10 minutes to calm down into more creative thinking. I dug into the previous night’s dinner discussion about Edward Snowden. Someone threw out (like a grenade) “do you think Snowden is a traitor or a whistle-blower?”

The general consensus was that Snowden betrayed our country because it was his job to protect secrets that could jeopardize lives. I had just read the following quote on someone’s car “Morality is doing the right thing, even if it means breaking the law, obedience is following orders even when it’s not the right thing to do.” I might be wrong about the breaking the law part, but you get the drift. I can’t imagine what motivated Snowden, but this is what I do know. Human beings have a long, long history of powerful forces monitoring and persecuting less powerful people. We are not living in particularly dangerous times. It’s always been dangerous to live in this world, just different kinds of dangers depending on the times and location. We need  to have a healthy suspicion of government monitoring. It should only be accepted with crankiness and indignation. Never make it easy for governments to monitor the people.

Speaking of government, I am so disappointed in Chris Christie. If he didn’t know what his staff was up to….then boo. If he did know….well then, you are breaking my heart Chris Christie.