Temporarily K-O'd

Old woman winter has struck with a vengeance here in the land of mild, rainy winters. Over the past couple of days we've gotten a good hard snow -- about an inch on the ground, and three inches on my car! It has also been colder than a . . . witch's hat. As the saying goes. Yesterday, I saw a dead duck frozen into a pond. Roads are slick with ice and dangerous to drive on. I've seen quite a few vehicles parked along roadsides on uphill stretches, typically somewhat askew, by drivers who evidently despaired of their uphill struggle and decided to come back after the ice had melted. Right at this exact moment, you would have a hard time convincing me that such a thing as global warming is taking place.

Alongside the snow and cold, we had a windstorm. You know, the kind that makes the trees sway dramatically, with a roaring sound, and the occasional piquant snapping sound when a branch breaks loose. Somewhere in the county, a tree did more than just sway; it toppled completely against a power line, and knocked out all the electricity throughout a very large area. Yes, a tree fell in a forest, and although I cannot declare with certainty if this went either heard or unheard, it most certainly did not go unfelt. Virtually NOBODY had electricity, and normal life screeched to a standstill. CF headquarters was a dark icebox for nineteen solid hours, with enforced web silence and no computer at all. Reading by candlelight was. . . different! As was writing by hand. Especially when I could see my own breath in that candlelight. . .

The power has just been restored. It is about 3 o'clock in the morning; I am luxuriating in a mug of HOT coffee, and getting the place warmed up again. Also, I am sharing the experience with all of you fine and excellent workers in the counter-feminist vineyard, everywhere on earth! This rhetorically disciplined interval of lyric prose has been strictly personal and . . . strictly apolitical -- which is to say that it does not mix the personal with the political. We don't do that in our sector.

It does, however, put a bit of a human face on the Movement -- although not too much of this. As a gesture, it is "just right", being neither too much nor too little. Nary a grappling point in sight! But it offers a certain "toasting marshmallows around the bonfire in a winter wonderland" sort of feeling, yes?

And yet, the total effect is calculated, with political designs uppermost.

Very well. This blog will now resume its normal political character.