Cold and clear this morning. Last night I watched Orion rising, it was magnificent. From the horizon, where every heavenly body looks huge, first his bow then a shoulder and all the way to his right foot emerged, and looked as if he should sweep up into the sky and loom over even the moon.

I am grieved over too many urban dwellers moving out into the deep rural mountains. They do not really understand what it is like to live in nature. Part of being in the country is to experience the night. The first thing they usually so it have large security lights installed on the utility poles and flood the area with light. This disrupts the night-dwellers and dims the stars. It is not really "day" and we never see "night." We now hang in a perpetual dirty twilight.

I miss the stars.

I am watching A Scanner Darkly right now and realize that stories like this are boring. I understand why an author likes to use the style of simply following stupid people living life, but it is hard on the audience.

We are reading Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey for Book Club. I fear telling the group that it was boring. Dull. Oh, well. I guess I am just dense.

Was looking for "The Perfect Mess" today and realized that for every book that was recovered, at least a dozen were destroyed. It is distressing to want to read a book, walk to the room where it should be, only to remember: the furniture and contents are different and what I came here for is gone. As we recover life begins to take on normalcy, and then a moment like that lurches everything to a halt and it all comes back. Hopefully these moments will fade and become fewer as we build a new life.