Diary

I seem to have cut back on my "Diary" posts recently and decided that I should write another one. At times I thought that I may have been making too many of them, and now perhaps not enough. These posts add a dimension to the blog, which may otherwise become a bit monotonous and overbearing, with serious (or pretentious) topics. It is probably healthy to indicate that an actual human being is writing this blog. I attempt to rethink the blog periodically in order to decide whether or not I should change anything. For most of its life it has had very few readers, and I know a few of them. Because I have been posting on it regularly for twelve years, and because of the way that search algorithms work, the number of pageviews started to increase steadily during the pandemic, and it went from about 200 pageviews per month in 2019 to about 25,000 per month today. I currently don't need any additional income, but it would be possible to put advertising on the blog if I started to go broke. However, I would hate to force people to watch those stupid LiMu Emu & Doug advertisements just to read the blog, and that isn't under consideration at the moment.

This is the coldest winter here in several years and resembles 2015. That can make life a little more difficult for some, but I can handle it – because I'm a Vermonter! Some things are actually easier in these conditions. The snow is fluffy and easy to remove, and, without thawing and freezing, there is no ice on the roads or my driveway. These conditions also draw a large flock of goldfinches to the feeder. The squirrels have a dedicated snow trail from the woods. One slight disadvantage is that, since I don't drive as much during the winter, the car's battery doesn't get charged up as much. Also, because the mailbox is a quarter-mile from the house, if the only driving I do is to the mailbox, it can be hard to restart the engine because the battery hasn't had a chance to recharge. When the temperature is below zero, your cold cranking amps are very low. But this isn't a serious problem, since I have a good battery charger and can restart the engine almost instantly. The battery is now eight years old but works fine. Other than this, the only problems are dry skin and insufficient exercise. The skin part is easy to handle with moisturizing cream. For exercise, I did go on a regular hike once in January, between snow storms. The rest of the time I just do jumping jacks and pushups inside. Also, because I now have a large basement, I'm doing indoor jogging. I don't actually like jogging, but it's an easy way to get your heartrate up. I think that half a mile would be about twenty-five laps, but so far the most I've tried is ten laps (it gets pretty boring). There is still the growing problem of low-quality television and news – including PBS – but that is a year-round problem.  

For entertainment, I am continuing my attendance of performances in Middlebury. Last winter I saw Steven Osborne, who is an extremely talented pianist. This year, because my grandson is a budding pianist who already has paid performances, I took the whole family to the Middlebury Inn for dinner, and then we all went to see Nahre Sol at the college. She is amazing! I had often wondered what would happen to classical music – would it die out? I now think that it could be having a resurgence, albeit with new compositions. There has always been a subculture of classical musicians, but you hardly ever hear about it these days. Although I have no musical training, I occasionally go to Musical Assumptions to remind myself that there are still civilized people in the world. The barbarians are at the gate, but I think that civilization will survive.

I will continue with Éric Rohmer on my next post.