Shortly before midnight we were awoken by the startling sound and flashing light of a fire alarm on the bedroom ceiling. It turned out that the recently installed system backfired. Apparently an ensuing communication between the building manager and a representative of the fire department disclosed a malfunction in the north wing stairwell of the building. It was a fitting start to the end of the Trump presidency.

“I wish the new administration great luck and great success,” Trump said. “I think they’ll have great success.“

Donald J. Trump, reality show entertainer

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Who doesn’t relish a find! Not unlike car accidents most of the worthiest discoveries are within a 5 mile radius of home, basically in your own back yard! It is perhaps a small compliment that my recognition of the proximity of this unearthing is a result of the COVID pandemic (which limits the horizon of one’s exploration) and my physical decline (which prohibits my interest in prolonged walking).  Only today for example as I hobbled up Mill Street from the book store to the car parked adjacent the Old Town Hall I recalled my last punishing attempt to mount the stairs in Rome; and, how a similar congestion would await any revisit to Paris for other than a short trot to the nearest café to sit watching the traffic go by.

“The Spanish Steps (Italian: Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti) are a set of steps in Rome, Italy, climbing a steep slope between the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti, dominated by the Trinità dei Monti church at the top.“

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On Wednesday, January 20th, 2021 Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. with Kamala Harris will be inaugurated as the 46th president and vice-president of the United States of America. If anything emerges from the last four years of American politics it is that one must rely upon one’s own choices in the matter.

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No time for ablutions. This is a cowboy day! Already breakfasted sometime around 4:00 am while placing things in line and creating a perfect square. Homemade apple sauce, crispy brown toasted bagel and rich creamy smelly cheese. A splinter of blue appeared in the awakening sky through the powdery sheers. On with the outer gear! Then onto the Electra! The subdivision roads were cloaked in remnant frosting, making it more treacherous than ideal.  Precision regard for the passage. Up the hill at the end of Jamieson Street, round the corner then cautiously back down Thorbun Street to Tait McKenzie Drive, turning onto King Street, left along Arthur Street down St. George Street, right onto Perth Street across Country Street then up William Street, James Street, Ann Street and back through the subdivision detouring one last gasp along Vaughan Street and home! A total of 4.41 kms.

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It’s just after five o’clock in the morning.  I have spent approximately the past three hours ardently organizing my so-called Tags on my computer. I am reminded of the quip that there’s nothing hard about law, you just need to know where to find it!  There’s more than a particle of truth to the saw. As for my current industry I can’t think there’s tremendous advantage in my having done so. But it does quell an obsessive element of my nature. The effort is diluted by the knowledge that many of the documents can be and have been already stored on other platforms – for example the income tax documents on the accountant’s “portal”. I have as well already uploaded and stored on my Google blog page the books and diaries I have composed since the advent of computers in the 1980s (which is when I stopped typing things on my portable Smith Corona typewriter). Whatever I had once handwritten in hardcover books, on blank pages or in three-ring binders has long ago disappeared. That early stuff was as stock an undertaking as a morning coffee when I attended prep school, undergraduate and law school. I even had an analgesic compilation in the early years of the practice of law.

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In the aspiration for healthy relationships I generally consider it high-minded to avoid conflict with others.  But competing with this positivism (which by the way pointedly has nothing to do with theism) is the natural and – dare I say it – the curmudgeonly inclination to adopt less than humanistic decisions. It is I believe more nutritious – and less ruinous – to exchange what springs from the source than from above. Nor is this a narcissistic devotion.  Very often the conviction for validity of fact is received with less than convenience or gusto. There is at least some assurance that it may not be overlooked entirely. By contrast being self-effacing seldom inspires legitimacy and may paradoxically defeat the very object of communication it was intended to inspire.

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Of late I’ve pondered the difference being here or there.  Specifically, the distinction between wintering in Florida and wintering in Canada.  Until most recently – that is, until the last few days when we’ve had a steady diet of snowfall and freezing rain – the  dissimilitude has not been especially pronounced. The candid truth of the matter is that our habits are so engrained that the predominant absorptions of our daily expression remain about the same wherever we are. Nor is this simply a cheerless commentary upon the inability to change or adapt. Indeed I believe I speak for us both when I say we’re rather proud of what we daily undertake no matter what the geography.

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Last evening we went to bed early enough that the next morning Nature’s signal to awaken and arise shortly after 8:00 am was tolerably well received. I twisted about in bed for another moment, attempting to inflict a chiropractic crack in my lower spine, while recalling the weather forecast that today would be the last for at least the next several days that we could bicycle on dry roads. Environment Canada had issued a serious Snowfall warning for Eastern Lanark County.

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Cloistered as we are by force of COVID restrictions, the bleak mild winter nonetheless sanctioned our ritual bicycle ride again this morning. Every day this serendipity occurs we predict it will be our last. But the “depths of winter” have yet to overtake. Accordingly we layered ourselves in cotton and sheepskin and headed out. Our venture today was along Country Street across Hwy#29 onto the Rae Road then winding back through town and home. Whether by ineluctability, acquiescence or fact it doesn’t seem to matter that the view of the snowy fields is distinct from the view of a sandy beach.  Indeed there’s something captivating about the complexity of a field as opposed to the banality of an ocean.

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