Sunset descends over Holland Michigan after 6:00 PM, Mile 16005

I am concerned for the people of Poland and Ukraine, who are facing temperatures of 30 below zero. Did I hear that right? As our sun descends, I see thirty seven degrees above zero Fahrenheit. Now that the sun has returned to the evening, I can't see where our climate will find any deep freeze gumption. We have six weeks of winter, according to a groundhog in Pennsylvania, but we haven't suffered more than a week or two of real winter yet.

I am at loose ends tonight. I went out the last two nights, staying out until three in the morning. I rested at home all day, recalling Dale Carnegie's advice to learn how to rest at home. Right now, I'm about to fuel up at Speedway and I am listening to Garrison Keillor interview a folk musician on the Prairie Home Companion, a blues musician who has just released an album called Vicksburg. It's veteran PHC player Butch Thompson. I am trying to imagine living on the prairie in a home of my own construction, made of sod and logs, listening to the radio and drinking tea, never thinking about hitching up the wagon and riding into town for entertainment. I am about to search the web to see what's up at the Acorn Theater or at Foundry Hall. Funny how I just has to get out of the house, and then when out of the house, deciding what to do. Stopping to write is a moment of grace, an act that blends soul-searching and self-education, all at the same time.

I should be in Detroit, but that's a whole story to itself.

I hope one day to travel as travels the itinerant Garrison Keillor, where people await his troupe and his show in auditoriums all over the world. I am glad to hear of his performance in Saginaw, in the restored and preserved Temple Theater. It is good to know that men who wanted to save the pipe organ saved the theater because only the theater was large enough to contain the organ and its pipes.

I have only listened to the Prairie Home Companion at home for a year. Since then, driving around in the car, often with my daughter, who adores Guy Noir. My college girlfriend and I would listen in bed after making love on Saturday nights, starting after Valentine's Day 1984. I am glad I made my way to the Milwaukee Auditorium in April 2008 when the PHC rocked the house with the lines, "Screw it! Let's Ride." And it's time to take my buggy south.