{I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.}

Yat Yee Chong‘s blog post amused me greatly the other day. At present, the sky is the color of old pewter and the thirty-some mile-per-hour wind gusts are somehow forcing their way through… well, everything. My hands are cold, and though it’s still in the forties, the forecast calls for… snow. Starting Wednesday, and rolling on through the weekend and into next week.

Ah, Christina. I, too, will not believe that “Spring” thing until I see it… But, the birds are tweeting themselves hoarse around 5 a.m. and right this minute, I smell… grass. And my nose is itching.

It approacheth, yea, verily, yet it is not quite close enough… darn it.

More than the weather, though, I am finding myself hovering on the edge of …well, grief. RIF – Reading Is Fundamental had their budget scrapped. The music program at the elementary school where I had my first solo has been… well, possibly cut altogether, possibly left in the hands of the talented community volunteers. We all acknowledge the power and importance of reading and music, so there may be some hope of salvage, but… the cuts and belt-tightening country-wide have become intensely personal. It becomes even moreso when you imagine the cuts and belt-tightening going on on a personal level. (If you’ve never played “Spent,” it is …disturbing, but eye-opening.) So many friends and family members have lost jobs, and are simply struggling to keep their heads above some very deep water.

It feels, on this gray day, like we need — something. In all the Ingalls books, isn’t this the time when there was a barn-raising or a corn-shucking, or something to pull the community together and out of their own grayness? Or is that no longer done, since everyone has all their own entertainment and social needs met on Facebook or with their Tivo, iPods, Netflix, or Smartphones at home? We can all be miserable separately, that way.

Since I can’t think of a positive solution, let’s have a flower.

Thank God for greenhouses. Light, color, perfection, even on a freezing cold day.

Things which have made me happy: a discussion on diverse books over at The Reading Tub – I’m on a roundtable panel for Share a Story, Shape a Future, and I invite you over to take a gander!

An additional happy: Emily Asher-Perrin’s piece on Tor.com on our lives as readers. You never truly forget where you read some of the books that changed your life… I will never forget where I was when The Hobbit was read to me for the first time, and the feel of the hard plastic phone receiver against my head as I drifted off to sleep every night. (Yep. It was read to me over the phone by Tech Boy, the boyfriend who worked nights and was wide awake. Fortunately we were in the same town or I would have had the phone bill from Hades.)(Actually I did the year after that when I graduated and moved away, but that’s another story…)

A further happy: Good Night, Dune. I giggled madly. (Well, yes, I am a geek. Thanks for noticing.) The Atlas Obscura — absolutely fabulous places all over the world – as discovered by the atlas makers. There’s a nifty place in your neck of the woods you knew nothing about! Check it out.

(Video via Smart B’s)Okay, that one’s a happy, but a little envious, too. I want the world to love stories and libraries and books like the Irish do. Could that be possible, world? Could we work on it??? And stop cutting arts programs??

My last happy for the moment: the BRILLIANTLY homeschooled “Jane” Wiley has split the atom! Okay, maybe not. She’s extracted the DNA from peas, though, which is twice as cool, and didn’t cause an explosion. In all seriousness, I stand in awe of that girl’s brain – let no one tell you that homeschooling does not produce a capitol-E Education.

Okay, the wind is howling, and I’ve given up on not wrapping myself in another layer of fleece. It’s time for a treat. Let’s have another flower…or several.

Happy Tuesday.