As many of you know who read this blog, from time to time I write about growing up on a dairy farm in the Adirondacks in the 1960s and '70s. As a kid you don't always know the struggles your parents go through when times are tough on a farm, but you know enough. You know life on a farm is a struggle and there are good times and bad. Mostly bad, lately for the small farmers. Living here in Maine now, I see there's bad time ahead for farmers again. This time, it may have a huge impact on all of us

Well, it's been a while since I lived through this kind of a cold snap for so long of a period, certainly not since I moved to Boston with my wife in the mid-1990s. So far this winter, we've dealt with frozen pipes to the kitchen at least four times. Personally, I'd rather be battling snow.

Abby's gone. No other way to say it really. The constant companion for my wife and I for the last sixteen years is no longer with us. The cat who would be human, (not to insult her in any way), had to be euthanized. We will miss her every day.

  All heaven and earth
Flowered white obliterate…
  Snow…Unceasing snow
           --HASHIN

Ah the power of a simple, 19th century Japanese haiku. What could better describe Maine in the last 24 hours?

This blog is the second part of my response to Zacharias Tims' original comment of an earlier blog of mine (see The Pantry, comment by Mr. Tims and my initial response to his comment, The Warmth of New Englanders.) In part of that commentary Mr. Tims notes:

I recently received an interesting (but misguided) commentary to one of my previous blogs (The Pantry comment by Zacharias Tims) that got me thinking about New Englanders in general and Mainers in particular. In one of my past lives (for I have reinvented myself along the way many times in my short, 40-something years), I trained as an anthropologist and historian. My love of learning has always been on New England culture and history, and having been born in Vermont and raised in northern New York, I feel a special affinity toward the region. Hence my need here to respond directly to Mr. Tims.