"The first of December was covered with snow. And so was the Turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston."

We'll overstate things a bit for the sake of poetry. There was just a bit of light snow falling very early this morning in central Massachusetts. The rain has washed it away.

Today is Huck's 91st birthday. The morning paper, however, lists the obituary of Ben, one of his closest friends and traveling buddies. My father was recently talking about Ben, noting that he was one of the last of the old gang. The services are Friday morning. I plan to attend.

As I started reading the paper this morning, I remarked to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice if, someday, just one day, the obituary page was empty?"

This is the last official day of the 2004 hurricane season. Someone forgot to tell Otto, a minimal tropical storm in the Atlantic east of Bermuda.

For those who are interested in exploring Canadian history, here's a pointer to the Archives Canada: http://www.archivescanada.ca/english/index.html

[This posting is later than usual. The weblog service that I use, blogger.com, was having technical difficulty until just a few minutes ago.]