Well, we got more snow last night and today we've had snow flurries and quite a bit of wind with a few moments in between that the sun was out. I don't think the temperature went above freezing all day. I'm sure you're tired of hearing about our snow, but whatever you're feeling doesn't begin to compare to what we're thinking and saying here at Joe's Pond. I think if anyone dared say they don't want to see spring come they'd be in real danger of getting smacked. The best thing I can say about our weather is that the roads haven't gone soupy -- yet. Jeff Downs at Joe's Pond Country Store said something like that to me the other day and I reminded him that mud season hasn't begun yet. We aren't getting off with an easy mud season, the ruts and goop and muck will be here, in due course.

We're hearing that the maple season has been super good this year. In fact, some producer over in New York state said this past week that he expects prices will go down because they're making so much of the stuff. Wouldn't that be sweet!! Of course, their weather may be better over there than it is right around here . . . but from what Burr Morse has been saying, they're making lots of syrup over in the Montpelier area.

Yesterday I checked the weather channel and got the word about the storm that is presently coming at us from the west. Fred was saying just this weekend that he expects at least one more big storm, and it looks as if this could be it. Just what we need!

Today has been an especially quiet one at the Brown house. I worked on the Joe's Pond newsletter, putting pages together and this afternoon I've been sorting and filing (on the computer) scans of news clips from the 1800's I took from the Vermont Advertiser and Watchman, a newspaper that was once published in Montpelier. The next step is to get the scans indexed and in order. I will probably print most of them, too. I can't imagine doing this without a computer. It has already taken me a couple years and I'm not finished - without a computer, I'd never get it done, I'm afraid. One of my problems is that I find myself taking time to read them, and that slows the process down a lot. But they are interesting. I'm fascinated by the journalistic style back then, too. There are surprisingly few typing errors though. I just looked up printing processes and found out the Linotype press was invented in 1884, but I'm pretty sure the Watchman wouldn't have had one right away, so the typesetting had to be done by hand. One would think that would induce editors to cut out any extraneous text, but in reading some of those old papers, that certainly wasn't the case. There were long and flowery accounts of even the most insignificant bits of news, and a lot of articles included a good bit of preachiness, too.