I was really looking for a version of The Cutty Wren (there are many many different ones, just trust me on that…) and instead I found this lovely version of Sherbourne, one of the all-time great carols, sung by John Roberts, Tony Barrand, Fred Breunig, and Steve Woodruff and then the more scholarly original version (although this is disputed by some, go figure). If you still feel like singing after that, try the Gloucestershire Wassail.

From the Quote Box and worth remembering:

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule. – J.R.R. Tolkien

Climb every mountain
Search high and low
Follow every byway
Every path you know

Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
Till you find your dream

A dream that will need
All the love you can give
Every day of your life
For as long as you live

Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
Till you find your dream
— Oscar Hammerstein II

Left work. Total gridlock with all the angry people from yesterday. Much honking and people trying to push through intersections and of course… making more gridlock. I decide trying to get over to get onto the Northway is hopeless. Turns out it was hopeless trying to get onto Rte 20 to get on the Northway. Go past that to get on rte 20 up by price chopper. Still gridlock but at least the intersections are clear. I can’t get over to get onto the Northway/I-90.

So I go down 20, thinking maybe I can go over fuller but also thinking that a rotary with gridlock is not where I want to be.

A miracle happens and I can get into Stuyvesant Plaza. I take my chance and even find a parking spot not too far from Chipotle. I figure that I can wait out what my mother tells me via voice mail is some big problem on a completely different highway and get a bite of dinner and maybe a coffee.

Dinner, a coffee. I look at my phone and another voice mail, this time from The Book House telling me a book I’d asked them to look for was in! And there you go – they’re still open, I’m still in the vicinity. I get my book (cheap!) and the traffic is cleared up and I get to drive home with a nice hot cafe mocha.

The End.

and given the recent find of extruded frost nearby and then those wonderful “flowers” in the arctic, here is a reprise of some photos taken in 2005 one cold winter morning. Just the right combination of cold outside, warmer humid inside and no doubt dirt on the window caused these very seuss-like works by Jack Frost.