We visited with my father yesterday afternoon and spent most of the visit looking for his hearing aid that had fallen off a bureau. We looked under furniture, around the wood stove, in the basket of 10-year-old newspapers, but didn't find it. We'll try again next time. It couldn't have gone far. He still has another. I suggested that we drop the other one in the hope that it would lead us to the first. He can get by, for the time being, with just the one. Besides, only needs them when people come to visit.

Also during the visit we looked through tattered paper albums and cigar boxes full of pictures. My grandmother had prepared some of the albums. Some of the pictures are 80 years old, photos of my father as a kid. There were lots of pictures of unknown people, many taken in Finland, stone-faced old Finns caught in a moment when all the world was in black and white. We'll probably never know who these people were.

Marley's enjoying having Sandra's parents in the house. Sandra's mother will be lying on the couch and Marley comes over to rest his head on her leg, giving and getting comfort in equal measure.

Hunting season has started. I passed a couple of hunters who were getting some supplies (beer) before heading out. They were dressed in camouflage jackets and pants and fluorescent orange hats. Do they want to be seen or not? There's no snow cover so it's difficult to track the deer. The forecast suggests that we might get some snow this week.

The funeral for my father's friend, Ben, was well-attended. We talked with Ben's daughter for a bit. "Now you're the only one with these stories," she said to my father.

He related one story about a time when he and Ben were riding the rails during the Depression. The train stopped. A railroad cop rounded up all of the guys who were on the top and in the box cars. The cop made all of the guys stand in a line and show the palms of their hands. He looked at my father's and Ben's calloused hands and said, "You guys can go. You know the meaning of a day's work."

My father and Ben were in their late teens and had spent a lot of time in the local gym, particularly working out on the high bar. Their hands were calloused from the workouts, not work. They'd not worked on anything harder than picking blueberries in the local fields.

Lynn stopped by yesterday afternoon with CasSandra. C. will be christened tomorrow, with a party to follow. Sandra's brother and sister will stay here tonight.

Lynn said that Krista had asked if C. could come in for Show and Tell. So, yesterday, Lynn brought the baby to the school. The kids in the first (Tess) and third (Krista) grades were quite excited. Joe's fifth grade class was more reserved, more cool. The teacher asked if there were any questions. After a few moments of silence, Lynn said, "Alright, I know that there's one question that you want to ask so I'll answer it now. Yes, Joe was this cute when he was a baby.

Last night we went to an art show. Last spring friend spent a week in France with eight other women. They are all artists - pen and ink, painting, and photography. This was a showing of the work that did on the trip and also a chance to tell the story of the trip to a wider audience.

It seems like we're getting out more and I guess that's true. We're just catching up, seeing people we should have seen six months, a year, two years ago. Good friendships are resilient, but we should never take them for granted.

The memorial service for John's mother will be next Saturday morning. She was an interesting and interested person, always greeting us with warmth and good humor. She loved opera and travel.

Friend John sent an email yesterday, reporting that his mother had died. They'd just brought her home from the hosptial and were making ready for hospice care. There will be a memorial service tomorrow morning.

John noted the unreality of it all. While this major and sometimes overwhelming event has taken place, the rest of life goes on around us. The same TV shows are on. Massachusetts drivers are still idiots. Kids are hitting their resonance frequencies as they anticipate Christmas. How do we fit this death in with the tremendous ordinariness around us? And if it doesn't fit, what then?

I'll take my father to the services for his friend, Ben, this morning. The owner of the funeral home is a good friend. He lives year-around at Queen Lake. The stairs to the funeral home are pretty steep, so my father called the owner and asked if he could come in the back way, using the elevator.

There was talk of snow today, but the cloud cover seems to be pretty thin.

He said, "potatoes".

Marley's getting signals from the dog satellite again (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0326900/). He's pacing the room with a low growl. When I let him outside, he looks around the yard and comes right back in. He does this four or five times until it passes and he lies down in front the stove again.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Why 2004 was the year of the blog

"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.]

Yesterday afternoon I walked past a display of wreaths. The smell of the evergreen brought the feeling, for the first time, really felt that Christmas is approaching. We've had Christmas gifts and displays in the stores since August, but it's been just noise to me. Christmas lights went up on many houses over the weekend and they look nice enough. The fragrance of the greens, though, brought me around. I'm now ready to face the season, a season that brings us stuff like this - http://www.hammacher.com/publish/71144.asp?promo=sportleisure.

My mother's been gone for more than four years, but we're still receiving mail for her. It ranges from Catholic worker newspaper to the journal of the Insight Meditation Center in Barre MA. How else might we learn about the grim tale of the Foolish Monkey - http://www.dharma.org/ij/archives/1999a/ss_monkey.htm?

The work deadline that had been scheduled for Friday, in my mind, at leasst, is now the end of the day on Wednesday. Today and tomorrow may be a bit frantic. I'm pretty sure that I have enough time. The major difficulty comes from interesting interruptions.

We're heading into an odd season. This next month has most of the usual work challenges. I have an important deadline on Friday and I'm quite anxious about it. At the same time, however, many people, adults and children alike, have already checked out in anticipation of the holidays. People at work are talking about decorating the office area. It isn't often that the outside world infiltrates the workspace.

We had a delightful holiday, including another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. We met Jennie's father, step-mother, brother, and sister at the Publick House in Sturbridge. The meal and service were good, but the restaurant did a less than stellar job of scheduling. We arrived early and were seated right away. Others, though, had to wait a long time, filling up the hall and stairs. One of our party has MS and gets about with an electric scooter. Navigating through the crowds was quite a challenge.

Sandra and I stayed overnight in Northampton. We booked online and chose one of the better rooms, with a promised view of the park. When we arrived, we discovered that we had a view of the alley. After a discussion with the front desk, we were given another room. This time, we could look over the air conditioning units and vents from the restaurant and see the park - ing lot. We had good time in town all the same. It's refreshing to be in a place where not everyone is white and straight. We visited with Adam, Jennie, and Lily for Friday night supper.