Short Day Overload

It snowed yesterday. It is supposed to snow again tonight. At the same time, against this weight of cold, the buds on the maple trees in every direction have begun to stir. Swelling a dark cranberry color as the sugars begin to fuel the leaf engines. These buds will be leaves before long. This snow will be forgotten. The cold will pass. The days will become livable, habitable.

In the brief moment between running here and there today, I caught five or six of his words as he shamed us in Europe. The man is without a functioning mind. I heard a woman this morning sneering at his claims to be defending freedom in Iraq, "It's an exercise in brutality and bloodshed," she intoned with proper British inflection, "How dare he!"