Orel Family

A few days ago I received a forwarded message from Eli Smith of the radio program Down Home Radio . He hosts the show on WNYC radio in New York, along with Henrietta Yurchenco. The message read, in part: "My co-host on the show, Henrietta Yurchenco sent me down to the WNYC archives a while back where archivist Andy Lanset gave me the transcription of a program which Henrietta was the producer for back in 1940. It is Leadbelly's show and his guest that week was Woody Guthrie. It's really a great show, about 1/2 hour long, and the audio fidelity is so good that it really gives you a taste of what it must have been like to turn on your radio and have these two great musicians playing live over the air. I don't believe this program has been heard since it was first broadcast 67 years ago." Eli sent out the note to his own distribution list, and fortunately one of the recipients forwarded it on to me. But I was busy, whatever, I didn't follow up. So, last ...

The things the children can say. I was out supervising the skiers last weekend, and called home. Elianna got on the phone. "What are you doing?," I asked her. "Talking to you on the phone!" Later, at dinner she announced, "I'm full!" So, we said, she must not want dessert. "No, only the healthy part of me is full. The dessert part is empty." We went to the North America International Auto Show last Friday. Lots of cars, not enough time to see without wearing out the legs. There were lots of legs, there too. We saw the Kia concept car, the Rue. The young woman there for the car explained that it was a clay model, talked about the car, and... had about the lowest neckline I've seen in years. And Lori kept asking questions. When we moved on, she asked me, "did you see enough?" All I could say was, "I suppose I could have seen more."

Winter finally started today. Our streak of days at least 7 degrees above normal ended last week at 31, and we ended up with 37 consecutive days above normal , altogether. Today was the first day of winter with temperatures below normal. We did have a nasty little ice storm Sunday night, took out a few pretty big trees around the neighborhood. I think it finally killed off the broccoli plants; first the winds took off the covers, then the ice froze the plants. They looked pretty stiff yesterday. Yesterday was the rare day with me off from work with the kids in school. Maybe the last such day this year. So I got to do after-school pickup. The sleet turned to snow just about pickup time. I picked up Elianna ath the kindergarden, and by the time I turned to warn her to be careful on the ice, she had her tongue out to collect the snowflakes. Snow, after all, is one of her favorite foods. The follow-up of "You Are My Sunshine" was the bonus for what had been a grey da...

Every day I've been back to work this week, at least one person has remarked something like, "at least it's not that cold outside," or "it's really nice out today!" To which I am usually responding something along the lines of, "no, this is bad, this is very, very bad." It's January and the ground in southeast Michigan isn't frozen. The broccoli plants are still alive in the garden, and still producing, I harvested more on New Year's day. There are immediate local impacts of the warm weather, of course: Ski areas are closed. Snow removal crews are idle. Heating bills are lower. And lots of people are talking about how "nice" the weather is. Today is the 26th consecutive day of above normal temperatures here. Every day during these past 26 has had a high temperature at least 7 degrees above normal. The following chart, culled from information at The Weather Underground website shows the temperatures here since Dec...