Here we are with Christmas Day behind us but the Season still at hand. I had a quiet, peaceful celebration, on my own. Rosemary and I attend Christmas morning Mass. The snow had arrived giving us a beautiful white Christmas but making the roads hazardous so the best place to be was at home. This has been a season of gorgeous flowers. Kathy gave me an Amaryllis which needs to be grown yet and I received three beautiful bouquets from family and friends.
Jason’s gang arrived Sunday afternoon with plans to stay until Wednesday but that wasn’t meant to be. A snow storm took out the electrical power over an extended area and they had to get home before pipes froze and animals suffered so they needed to return, which they did the following morning. As I sit here working on this entry Pebble Creek is still without power, although Jason has the water again flowing and the generator buzzing. Their local PUD employees had been working two days without rest so were finally sent home to sleep and will soon be back on the job.
Not all was lost however. The afternoon Jason’s gang arrived we soon head over to Dennis’s place for an evening of sledding on his hill. While we played Dennis prepared a delicious lasagna dinner for us. We had a great time not knowing about the storm west of Portland until we got home.
St Mary’s of Vernona performed their usual Christmas Pageant this year. Sophie and Maddy worked on the narrative and helped with the production. They also shared the responsibility of being the Narrators. Sam was one of the Wisemen.
I have been out snow shoeing in the woods around my house. I finished a most enjoyable book by David McCullough titled, “Brave Companions, Portraits in History.” David McCullough has written profiles of exceptional men and women past and present who have not only shaped the course of history or changed how we see the world but whose stories express much that is timeless about the human condition. In this book he speaks of Alexander von Humboldt, whose epic explorations of South America surpassed the Lewis and Clark expedition; Harriet Beecher Stowe, “the little woman who made the big war”; Frederic Remington; the extraordinary Louis Agassiz of Harvard; Charles and Anne Lindbergh, and their fellow long-distance pilots Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Beryl Markham; Harry Caudill, the Kentucky lawyer who awakened the nation to the tragedy of Appalachia; and David Plowden, a present-day photographer of vanishing America. We already know the great deeds these people have done but McCullough tells of the personal lives and character of the people themselves instead of just their great deeds. If you enjoy history you would love this book.
From Alexander von Humboldt to Charles and Anne Lindbergh, these are stories of people of great vision and daring whose achievements continue to inspire us today.
