I have been sick with the flu for eighteen years now, the last six days of which were mostly spent in bed, which may account for what you’re about to read, but then again, it may not. I’m beginning to think that my fever may have actually cleared my head more than it shrouded it. This may not be such a wonderful thing.

Winter is arrived, wrapping us in the deepest darkness.  The sun sits suspended on an invisible threshold, its solstice marking both an end and a beginning, a tipping point.  The power, the crisis of this moment, was keenly felt by our ancestors. 

Spring has officially arrived at our house, heralded by the arrival of yellow daffodils poking up under the walnut tree and six fuzzy, baby chicks peeping away in our bathtub-become-brooder. I am surrounded by Life, by the clamor of two children, eleven chickens, two rats, a Golden Retriever and a newly inherited, deaf, mostly toothless terrier named Henry, and I’m loving it.