~ Everett's latest snowball ~

I'm just finishing up my working day and am about to go for a stroll. It looks gorgeous out there. Only about 5 below, now. That's Celsius, of course. The sky is blue; that's good enough for me.

Some readers have been asking for book recommendations. I don't at the moment have any great ones on the go; have just started One Thousand Roads to Mecca; Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage. It contains 23 different accounts of the journey; the first one was written about a thousand years ago. I'll let you know if it gets exciting.

Meanwhile, another excerpt from Two Lives, by Vikram Seth, whose aunt's mother and sister were still back in Hitler's Germany after she had gone to live and work in London:

"Given the character of the Aunty Henny I knew, she would have stifled her dread and just got on with things. Nothing could be changed from a distance and, as she often said to me while teaching me German:
Happy he
Who forgets
What no longer can be changed."

After Henny died, her husband, in his grief, burned every photo of her that he could find so that he would not be upset by the reminders. Can you imagine?