We just heard about a very unfortunate experience one of our Joe's Pond families were forced to go through over the holidays. Many of you know about Bob and Dotty Noyes' grandson, Nicholas, who has Batten's disease. His parents took him to Disney World in Florida, which means a great deal to him, and on their way home just before Christmas, Southwest Airline wouldn't let them have his special seat on the flight. Here's the story as it appeared on FOX News: News Report

This family has been through so much, something like this is the last thing they should have to deal with. We hope the airline looks carefully at their regulations and the training of their crews so they will deal with situations like this better in the future.

We had a cold night last night, and a bright but cold day today. The thermometer got to -6.1 last night and hasn't been much above 10 degrees all day, with a bit of wind to keep things even a bit cooler. I haven't been outside except to take my CoCoRaHS measurements at 9 a.m. Fred, however, has been out several times, blowing away the couple inches of snow we got overnight, picking up the mail, etc. I'm getting over a "holiday cold" and take great pleasure in doing as little as possible. However, I did feel inspired this morning to take down all the Christmas decorations. The tree was in the way of getting the window quilts over the big windows in the living room, so once that was gone, it was best to get everything else taken care of, too. I usually leave everything until after New Years, but I suddenly wanted to get it taken care of early.

There hasn't been much e-mail activity in the past week - which is good, because I haven't been very attentive to the computer. Before and just after Christmas we had lots of lovely e-mail greetings and messages from family and friends, and we thank all of you. I've noticed a sharp decline in regular greeting cards this year, and some of the people who sent e-mail messages or cards mentioned they were "going green." I can certainly understand that - I don't like tossing those beautiful greeting cards, and although there are some ways they can be recycled, I haven't found many good prospects in the past few years. I didn't send any regular cards out this year. I'll write a few letters a little later to friends and family who don't have computers, but I did my holiday greetings all on line.

Now it's time to think about New Year's Resolutions. I'm afraid I don't do well with those, so I won't even pretend to make any. I just hope 2012 turns out to be a nicer year than the last one - more peaceful, more jobs and fewer homeless and hungry, few or no awful weather catastrophes, and less political nonsense. It's time for things to turn around in this old world.