[AT] Snow and the season

[dean at vinsonfarm.net]

Hello and good morning, all you fine folks on the list.  I've enjoyed a lightly
snowy Christmas among neighbors and family at my dad's farm in northeast Ohio, a
lovely a setting as one could ask for, and a time of celebration of our
blessings in life as well as shared recognition and support for the
challenges--personal, physical, financial--that each of us faces in our varying
extents.  I recall one childhood Christmas in particular where everything seemed
perfect and I had no worries of the future, no awareness that hard times could
come or that sometimes hard times don't end the way we'd like.  The passage of
decades has taken away that possibility for me, yet still this was a good
Christmas, a good moment to pause and celebrate and share the connection of
friends and family.
 
Some of you on the list I've met, most I haven't, but among my celebrations
today is gratitude for the sense of friendship and family I find here--not the
childlike delight in opening a new present (although, come to think of it, when
one of us acquires a new tractor or achieves some restoration victory, it comes
close--but the sense of sitting around the breakfast table on a snowy morning
with hot coffee and people with whom I share an understanding of common travels
and hopes.
 
God rest ye merry, gentlemen.
 
Dean Vinson
on the farm in Robertsville, Ohio, near the window where years ago I took this
photo:
http://www.vinsonfarm.net/photos/barn_winter.jpg