More Snow and More Snow.

April 14, 2013

Oh what the hell! Why are we getting snow? It’s not funny or even rational anymore. It’s just pathetic, just mean and pathetic. Sigh. I think of the book "On the Edge of Nowhere" by James Huntington a lot these days. They had it much harder in Alaska in the early 20th Century than we do in our warm houses and warm cars. He and his brother Sidney who wrote "Shadows on the Koyukuk" described their sometimes harrowing moments and sorrows and the day to day moments which to their very accomplished lives. 

Anyway, something new on this mean and pathetic day. I’ve decided to learn Backgammon. I bought an app and the app is helping me to learn the plays and strategy. The game is 5000 years old. You move by the role of the dice or die to be more accurate. The object is to get your pieces, white or black, one side to the other and down to the other end and back. So you move in a horseshoe pattern. There is strategy involved and that’s what makes it challenging.

I like it because it makes me think and it calms me. And it's old. It connects me with a past that is as old as the beginning of modern civilization in Egypt and Iraq and Persia.  

I think this ancient game is a perfect something new for a lousy, pitiful, pathetic April 14^th. Here's to hot chocolate and backgammon and maybe a couple of very good books. 

Sincerely,

Jeanne Mulcare