This week in Harmony:

Elementary school basketball game, elementary school Christmas concert, elementary school Christmas party, elementary school bunny transported to my house for the duration of the holiday. I have never bunny-sat before, but my dog will no doubt do most of the work.

Otherwise, we are settling in for a standard miserable winter. Currently my yard is slathered with a thick layer of lumpy dirty ice (ideal for breaking a hip), with the good news being that expensive snow tires really do keep a non-four-wheel-drive car from sliding into a culvert. The sky is permanently glowering and overcast, and there is nothing in the world to do about it except to eat hot soup and go to bed early. Reading novels has become difficult because all the characters are bound to be disappointed in life. I've just received a magazine clipping in the mail assuring me that Jane Austen would have understood our banking crisis, but I am unclear as to whether or not the magazine clipper is deriding this point of view. As a welcome distraction, however, a correspondent in Edmonton tells me that it's -25 degrees Celsius in Alberta. Maine, thank heavens, has not yet dropped to such depths. But just wait a month. 

This week in Iowa in 1885:

"Wednesday [December] 16

"James wash and do other chores. Henry went to Manchester to see Harry as he intends to go away this evening     he gave a "General Grant book to Henry." James had a regular splurge talking against educations being of use to people, advocating that those who were not educated were the best off etc. I proved to him that education done no harm to any one & that it helped they who were inteligent & ambitious, while those that were lazy &c received benefit by it for it was all they ever were that was worthy of notice. I was very tired and nervous all day. wish I knew how Sarah is. Harry went to bid her his adieu yesterday. pleasant."

--from "A Secret to Be Burried": The Diary and Life of Emily Hawley Gillespie, 1858-1888