Forward and Backward

It is the month of waiting and watching, gang.  The month when we look forward  and backward.  An ironic month.  The second month of winter for us folks here in the Northern hemisphere but the second month of summer for folks down Australia way.  The coldest month for us in the U.S. and the hottest month for the folks in New Zealand!!  Named after the ancient god Janus, "the keeper of the gate - or doorway", January is appropriately named since it represents the portal to the future but it also is the point from which we view the past year.

For those of us right here in beautiful metropolitan Ridgeway it is certainly a paradoxical month.  Just a few days ago it was seventy nine degrees and this morning it dropped to twenty eight!!!  Whoa, what a change!!!

January is a month I associate with one of the first "modern era" books by a Russian author I read during the "cold war", Boris Pasternak's "Dr. Zhivago."  Folks today have a hard time understanding just how radical it was for us to be able to read a book like that in the late fifties or early sixties.  And then - when we moved to Columbia, S. C. in 1966 - the movie version of the book was just beginning it's tour of the country.  We went to see it in June of 1967, one of the hottest months we had experienced since leaving the U. S. Navy.  We were new to the city and went to see the movie with our next door neighbors, the Powells, at the old Palmetto Theater (I think) on Main Street.  It was incredibly hot in Columbia that June and when we entered the theater, the frigid chill generated by the air conditioner was welcomed.  Well, if you have ever seen the movie you probably remember the part where Dr. Zhivago (Omar Sharif) deserted from the army and trudged through the snow for what seemed like weeks!  By the time he got where he was going I was virtually frostbitten - sitting right there in the movie theater in Columbia S. C. - with the temperature somewhere around 100 degrees!  Just recalling that incident brings back so many memories!  The book was such a dramatic "in your face" gesture to the Soviet Union. Unbelievable at the time!  And the Nobel Prize in literature it earned was almost incomprehensible by most average folks because of the psychotic politics we were living through.

Anyway - rushing back to the present - we are here in the middle of what is a very interesting month.  Interestingly, when the ancient folks developed their calendar they simply left out the winter months and it wasn't until the 600s that someone decided that they needed to chip in another two calendar months (January and February) to straighten things out.  But the bottom line is .. here we are.  It's cold, dark and a time when pensive reflection by a crackling fire is a lot more fun than trudging around through snow.  Linda has been out of town on an "artist's retreat" and Sherwood has been hip-deep in her responsibilities at St. Michael's and I've been at loose ends.  So - while we have this time for reflection why don't we think about all those ways we are going to make 2013 the best year yet in our short time hanging out on the planet.  We are beginning to work on our plans for the next adventure so hang in there with us and we'll be ready to go soon!!!  See ya.