Ice Storm 2026

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I was hoping to upload a pic from our recent ice storm but some glitch is preventing me. In the meantime, enjoy this excerpt from one of my favorite short stories “The Snow covered up the grass with her great white cloak, and the Frost painted all the trees silver. Then they invited the North Wind to stay with them, and he came. He was wrapped in furs, and he roared all day about the garden, and blew the chimney-pots down. “This is a delightful spot,” he said, “we must ask the Hail on a visit.” So the Hail came. Every day for three hours he rattled on the roof of the castle till he broke most of the slates, and then he ran round and round the garden as fast as he could go. He was dressed in grey, and his breath was like ice.” (The Selfish Giant, by Oscar Wilde)

Seneca: On Friendship

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“You have sent a letter to me through the hand of a ‘friend’ of yours, as you call him. And in your very next sentence you warn me not to discuss with him all the matters that concern you, saying that even you yourself are not accustomed to do this; in other words, you have in the same letter affirmed and denied that he is your friend. Now if you used this word of ours in the popular sense, and called him ‘friend’ in the same way in which we speak of all candidates for election as ‘honourable gentlemen,’ and as we greet all men whom we meet casually, if their names slip us for the moment, with the salutation ‘my dear sir,’ – so be it. But if you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means.” (Seneca, Letter 3, “On True and False Friendship”)

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