• -- I'm looking out at a foot of snow that appears to be here for the duration. It's odd to see the Burnham shore full of snow but with an unfrozen lake in the foreground.
• -- Before the last round of snow came I was driving a back road to Monroe with John Phelan and saw the remaining wall of this house. It must have been a grand old house with granite lentils on the windows and several fireplaces. The back roads of Maine are full of stories.
• -- Sometimes a cockamamie idea actually works, like sledding the generator box down the hill on a tarp to get it from the driveway to the basement. We've had several power outages with the three recent snowstorms. I'm reconfiguring my generator arrangement for more peace of mind.
• -- I am working many hours every day on a fairly complicated web app for a client. It's an AJAX front end with tabs, and Java and MySql on the back end. JQuery, like snow, is both a blessing and a curse.

There are always things out there that say hey you take my picture. They just call me over, Hannah's squash box, Buckle's barn wall. We are entering the darkest two months of the year, those on either side of the the winter solstice. The slide down to the bottom of the year is an odd time, but I'm looking it right in the eye. No, nadir of the year, I will not be averting my gaze. I was a judge at a Unity College poetry slam this evening. Ok, it was my first poetry slam ever and I think it's a great thing. People put themselves out there and say this is who I am, wanna mess with me? I look forward to attending one not limited to UC students because if the MC's intro poem is an indication, there's some great slamming poets out there.

Walks by water are the best trails. I've found two and I'm looking for more. Last week we did a bit of the Messalonskee Stream Trail on the rolling wooded terrain of a river bluff with views of a dam and old mill. Today we were in Belfast and took the walk down by the docks that brings you over the walking bridge after wandering through the working boat yard. Super smart development.

It all runs together: the election that gives us another four years of the worst governor ever, the early snowstorm that knocked out power for days, the dark evenings, the sketchy generator. November has already outdone itself for suckiness. Nationally, one of the biggest election effects will likely be the shelving of any initiatives to combat climate change, and in Maine state govermnent, the thug will continue to do stupid things. That leaves local efforts, but locally is where it need to happen anyhow. We have a few people here who want to start a community solar initiative. I will work on that and getting petition signatures for ranked choice voting. I remind myself of the two things I'm good at: showing up and not becoming cynical.

Looking back through these pages, I can see that we have had an amazing summer and fall. That must be why I do this. November is a good time to work and I am working almost full time on a web app for a client whose old system is failing sooner than expected. But I'm not commuting, just hanging at my desk with just some glass between me and the world.