Tonight there is a ring around the moon, an aura or halo. It is huge. Raise your hands above your shoulders like you are giving praise to God. Then spread your arms a little. That's how wide the aura looks from where we are. I can't tell if it is in space, "millions of miles away," as John said, or just in our atmosphere, a parting of clouds. In either case, the luminous perfect circle seems immediately above our heads, just as the aurora borealis did last fall.

It snowed and sleeted today. The planties in the cold frame are still growing nonetheless. In the afternoon the weather was gorgeous, windy and clear and fresh.

I've put my father's photograph in our living room. It's the first time since he died (that I remember) that I've had his photo on display. It is very nice to see him smiling at me as I walk by. I never thought of a photo as having such power, nor did I think the sight of my long-dead father's face could give me comfort and joy. John says he is glad to see my Dad's face up there.

Today at my first visit to a chiropractor in Lake Placid he went through the regular series of medical questions: he asked if I had children. No. Had I ever been pregnant? Yes. "Oh," he said quite kindly and sympathetically, "you lost it." It was not a question. I now know the language to use up here about that particular personal/political thing.

Quote of the day: "Peepers and mud... You're rich!" --Bunny LeClair, neighbor

Things that happened in the last 24 hours:

I hung laundry out to dry, then there was a thunderstorm; the temperature got up to the 70s: all these things for the first time since last fall.

John got the Pathfinder stuck in the mud. He drove out back to the field to get some large tree stumps for around our fire pit. He felt the Nissan fall into a sink hole and tried to power out of it but couldn't. A neighbor with a Jeep and a winch got the truck out.

I started a cold frame of vegetables, flowers and herbs.

We learned that our orange cat Bean has more than once been caught in our neighbor's skunk trap, which would explain Bean's occasional overnights.

I made an 81st birthday card for Nana, John's grandmother, and a thank you card for Mark, our postmaster who took us on a boating trip on Saranac Lake last week.

We watched "Winged Migration," which is tremendous.

Note to the creator of Shitbegone toilet paper (www.shitbegone.com)

Dear Jed,

I lived in Williamsburg, Bklyn when Shitbegone first snuck onto the shelves of local minimarts (1999? 2000?) I got my first rolls at the bodega across the street from Iona bar, corner of Grand and Bedford. The Spanish-speaking proprietors were confused by my laughter when I saw the product. I sent my mother, who has a colostomy, a roll and she adored it. Having a colostomy, she had no need to consume the toilet paper, and she still proudly displays it as her own personal poo joke. Back in Williamsburg I, and presumably others, kept buying the rolls until the bodegas no longer stocked them. "No, we don't carry that any more," they said, as if they had discovered a cruel joke had been played upon them. In a way, I guess it had.

Now I live on a farm in the Adirondacks where people don't have senses of humor like they do in NYC. Here there is a lot of shit from animals that weigh as much as taxis, and peoples' septic tanks--including mine--back up, producing more shit. From my point of view this means even more need for Shitbegone toilet paper.

I display my last roll of Shitbegone in my country kitchen, along with an empty carton of Homo Milk from Quebec. No one of our new local friends yet has reacted. Perhaps they are blind, or they think my taste is beneath comment.

Would love to know when your website upgrade and new merchandise are ready. Thanks for creating a classic.

Martha

At lunch today Rachel and Rebekah were saying how Selden birthed two lambs this morning. At that moment John Doan came to the table with a plate heaped with a large, dark hunk of meat and bone. “There’s lamb up there if you want it,” he said. I thought that the lamb on his plate was one of the ones Selden birthed this morning. I thought she caught the lamb, gave it to the kitchen, and here it was on John's plate. I nearly threw up. Folks teased me for a second but then said the lamb was from another source. Even so, I had to leave the table. This is akin to when my neighbor said he was selling his sled, and I saw a flexible flyer in my mind’s eye. I went to his basement to see the sled and there was a behemoth snow machine that holds two people, has a cooler and a stereo…