Sutton's Greenhouse - Buy Local

It was pushing 50˚F (10˚C) when I did my run today and the sun was bright and the sky blue.

But it was grey Tuesday until I got to Sutton's. This is our neighborhood greenhouse. Family owned and run. It's not your spic-n-span everything-in-order store. It feels like it's lived in. It's one of those vestiges of how things used to be. Like Spada's that used to be near the corner of Tudor and Lake Otis. You know this is a labor of love because they can't be making too much money from this. The back rooms aren't open yet, but the green and the warmth and the fragrance made for a great stop.

And there are bargains still to be had. Most of the plants for sale in the picture are plugs - little plants in individual plugs of soil. The ones in front here weren't cheap - $1.95 each. But the ones in back were only 25¢. There were too many good ones for me to decide. And if I get them, then I have to care for them pretty quick. So I just bought some seeds, for now, and I'll go back and pick out the plugs I want and can handle.


Before you go get plants at national corporate stores like Lowe's or Home Depot or even Costco, check out the local greenhouses like Sutton's that are run by local folks and much more of the money you spend stays in Anchorage. Even if some things are a little more expensive, you know that most of the plants were grown locally [I called and asked and they guessed about 60% are locally grown.]. That saves energy shipping them up here. (OK, what's the tradeoff between the shipping energy use and keeping greenhouses going here? I don't know, but most things from Lowe's are grown in greenhouses outside as well.) And the plants here are grown by people who know what grows well in Anchorage. And unlike most of the clerks at Lowe's, the people here can answer your questions.

Sutton's is at 2845 E Tudor Rd on the corner of Wright Street and Tudor - a few blocks east of Lake Otis. If you're headed toward the mountains, it's on your left. 907-563-5521

Anonymous Bloggers

Anonymous left another message. There's been quite a few actually, a number of which I didn't post to allow him to give me information without publicly revealing clues to his identity. The style of Anon's posts range from 'loose' to 'very reasonable. You may have read a few and not realized it was the same person. And then he slips back into this sort of post. It slides along the edges and over the boundaries of respectful and seems at places to be reacting more to his image of what I'm writing, rather than what I'm actually writing.

OK, being rational isn't the only reasonable option. There's also funny. And tapping into one's emotions is also fine. But being irrational - things like jumping to conclusions based on false assumptions, not responding to the other person's arguments, not being internally consistent, etc. - doesn't help the discussion along. I understand that someone can forget all those things in an emotional reaction. But then as we calm down a bit and get to chatting, I expect one to get over that and into a more rational discussion, one where we aren't making snide comments. That doesn't mean we can't identify behavior that we see as negative or harmful, but that when we do that we try to separate the behavior we see as problematic from the person were talking to. And we point out the behavior we have problems with. When the discussion is in writing, it's not too hard to do.


As I've said in an earlier post, getting something like this once in a while is not a problem. If someone is doing their best to express themselves, but they aren't great writers, no big deal. But it was a flurry of such posts that caused me to turn on the 'review comments' function and to offer some guidelines for commenting here. And suddenly this and at least one other anonymous poster took more care on their posts. So I began approving them.

Let me go through the latest comment with my reactions. This is a comment on the post Blogging - What's Real? How Do We Know? Stevens, Kepner, Joy? posted April 3 and this comment is dated April 15, 12:27pm. (I've been rejecting this sort of post since last week, but I do want my readers to know what I'm reacting to.) In the comment prior to the one below, I say I have a life beyond the Stevens trial, but I'll pay attention and if I think I have something of important to say, I will. I end with, "If anyone has important info that isn't available elsewhere and they are willing to write in an objective, non-derisive way, I'll consider guest posts." Anon writes:

Well, derivise, and non-objective commentary, has been thrown at some DOJ attorneys from assorted, as if that is some Soccer Club thing, the Artic Bears vs, AMERICA & fed by the cheering, and Esq AK club fans in assorted artic circles.Wev the head, the main nail 'em,, nail the public servants, those outsiders, those lower 48ers

OK, I take this to mean there are Alaskans who are being derisive and non-objective about some DOJ attorneys.

The main public servant attorney under attack by the Artic Club is Nick Marsh.
He acheived a substanial victory in the 9th Circuit, when some of the Artic Club sought to withhold evidence(the Ak bribe matters).
He is a graduate of Duke Law School, and used to work with a big NYC law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, and was noted in this case:

http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/351/351.F3d.1348.01-16973.html

OK, I've seen Nicolas Marsh in action at the Alaska political corruption cases. I've given my impressions of him in court which in terms of the important things were mostly positive. I did find him very technically competent, but, particularly in the first trial, I thought his person to person communication with the jury could be stronger. I know about Marsh's previous employment because I googled him during the Alaska trials since the DOJ would give no background information about the attorneys. I'm guessing the victory in the 9th circuit was the Weyhrauch appeal, but I'm not sure the importance of the linked case. It mentions Marsh once as the eighth of eleven attorneys listed for the Plaintiffs-Appellees.

With all the artic club white collar club support group, now -- will Mr Marsh have to hire an attorney(his own attorney), given how the artic club is yapping, and jiving, and going on about the low
fatality rates on red shirts, and the flow of traffic.

Since my most recent post was about traffic fatalities in Thailand during Songkran and how much higher they were than deaths in the red shirt demonstrations, it seems reasonable to conclude that Anon is including me amongst the 'artic club' 'yappers' that are responsible for Marsh apparently hiring a private attorney. (And I have reason to believe that the Anon comment on the Thai traffic post is from this same Anon.)

Here's a spot where I don't see the logical flow of Anon's argument. I've hardly said anything about Marsh for a long time. I did note a couple of times that he had been on the team that very competently handled the Alaska cases. If anyone cares, they can put Marsh into the 'search blog' window in the upper left on the tool bar above. Is it because I'm not dropping everything else I'm doing to pursue this? Since when are bloggers beholden to do the bidding of their commenters? Now, Anon may take that to be a derisive comment. I think it's a fairly reasonable statement of my take on this. I could be wrong on it being presumptuous, but rather than taking it as an insult or condescension, if Anon were to take issue with this, he should point out why it isn't presumptuous.

I suppose derivise is in the eye of the beholder, it does point that up.
For a while, it looked like Steve was obssessed on blowing the cover for some "annons", to tell who they were not, as if he has that copy right, & as if telling 'em how to write comments on SEA Museums, or fear abounded he would lose friends, if he did not.

I can understand the confusion based on one of my post titles.. But I did address this in an earlier post or comment. And the post itself isn't about identifying the commenter. My post on "Figuring out My Anonymous Commenter" was not aimed at figuring out who the commenter was, but at the commenter's motives and how I could determine if the commenter actually had access to important information relevant to the Stevens trial fallout. While I think I have an obligation to be polite to people who post here, I don't have an obligation to spend my time responding to whatever they propose for me to do. If I determine it isn't leading to something useful (the commenter has the responsibility to help me see the importance,) I don't need to spend more time on it. And if the commenter is changing the tone of my blog by the number and tone of the comments, I have no obligation to keep posting them. Fear of losing friends? It might be interesting to see who Anon thinks my friends are. My friends respect what and how I write even if they don't always agree with me.

I don't have a need to know who Anonymous is. It would be helpful to be able to distinguish between one Anon and another Anon so I can be sure to respond to them individually. But I respected Anon's privacy and suggested he email me instead of posting to the world if he was concerned.

Anon's response was links to sites explaining government programs to eavesdrop on private email. Since I thought he was telling me he didn't want to be tracked down, I then tried to set up a way for Anon to communicate with me without having to post his comments for the whole world to see. The response to that was blasting me for censoring his comments. I do recognize that trying to communicate that way raised the possibility that some messages from me didn't get read. But I have evidence that most if not all were read.

We have lost all hope of objective, fairness, and bringing out to the artic club other aspects on things, it is most obvious how the Artic Club works.
So, now band this post too, with so many others, and pat yourself on the back as some fairness objective: IN the KNOW from your perspective.
Hey, you pay the hook up fees, that must make you non-derivise, and in the know.
Now, do as your usual -- push your remove button. And, wait for others to examine matters, who do not have that Artic edge/ slant.

I understand this to mean that I'm still hopelessly unfair and subjective, and I'm still going to ban this commenter. I have a license to be derisive (no examples of where I was being derisive.) Then Anon seems to back off a bit. Go ahead, Anon, seems to be saying, give it up and let others, without an Alaska perspective, pursue this story.


This good cop/bad cop routine is starting to get tiring.

So, why am I spending all this time on this Anonymous commenter? (Yes, I'm pretty sure there are more than one of these Anon bloggers, but I'm also reasonably sure that many are from the same person). Because:

• Writing things out helps me think through them.
• I assume that there is a person inside every body despite the masks people hide behind. So I'm giving a shot at some real conversation before I pull the plug on these comments.
• Anonymous bloggers and anonymous commenters are something of an internet phenomenon. I hope that my thoughts here might be helpful to others facing this.
• Maybe someone who has a better handle on this will email me with sage advice.
• Even if I'm wrong and my effort to engage Anon in a real conversation fails, other readers can understand my thinking process as I try to work this out.

Thailand: 220 deaths and 2,658 injured

You didn't read that news about Thailand in the New York Times, did you? Or any other US newspaper or tv news?

Because this was traffic deaths during the Songkran holiday period which began as the rioting was winding down. Traffic deaths are not as important to us as rioting or terrorist deaths. (I imagine to the families they are, but not to the media or to politicians.)

There are about 40,000 annual traffic deaths in the US. That's about 340,000 people killed in the United States since 9/11. The number of people killed by terrorist attack inside the US has been about 3000 since 9/11. (A recent National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report says 2008 was the lowest number - 37,313 - since 1961 due to more seatbelt use and less driving because of high gas prices.)

Finding figures on how much we've spent on the war on terror - including Iraq and Afganistan - is much harder on Google than one would expect, but the numbers in this March 2006 article cover the range pretty much:

within another three years, total direct and indirect costs to U.S. taxpayers will likely by more than $400 billion, and one estimate puts the total economic impact at up to $2 trillion.

So, we got lots of news about Thai red shirt demonstrators in the streets, but the reports I've read say that only two people died. But right after the demonstrations were over and Songkran festivities began, 220 people have died already in Thailand. And who is covering that?

Tourists left Bangkok because of riots. But being on the roads of Thailand is much more dangerous. Especially on a motorcycle. What we know about the world - especially places and events we don't see with our own eyes - is largely shaped by the media and what stories they choose to report and choose not to. And how they report the stories and how much time they spend on them. So the tourists came to Thailand even though traffic collisions are high because they don't pay much attention to that (until they get there.) But the visions of rioters in the street looked far more dangerous. But actually weren't.

We pay much less attention to traffic deaths than to riot or terrorist deaths. If saving people's lives were the important factor, would we have spent huge amounts of money to send soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan while spending a tiny fraction of that to prevent traffic deaths? Don't forget 340,000 in traffic deaths v. 3000 in terrorist attack in the US since 9/11. But we didn't spend 100 times as much to prevent traffic deaths. What if we did? or just 100 times more than we spend now to prevent traffic deaths?

Here's more on the Thai story from the Nation via ThaiVisa

BANGKOK: -- Road casualties climbed to 220 deaths and 2,658 people injured as 2,658 accidents were recorded nationwide in the first four of the "seven most dangerous days" of the Songkran festival.

Chiang Rai had the most accidents at 102 followed by Nakhon Si Thammarat at 94, Paichit Varachit, deputy permanent secretary of the Public Health Ministry, said yesterday.

Monday alone saw 863 traffic accidents with 81 deaths and 940 injuries.

Driving under the influence of alcohol was the major cause of accidents followed by speeding.

Most mishaps involved motorcycles driven from 4pm-8pm.

The rest is at the link above.


You may or may not have noticed that I have not used the term "traffic accidents" in this post. My son has convinced me that most so called traffic collisions are preventable.


Also, doing this post brought to my attention the difficulty in getting budget estimates for traffic death prevention. Obviously there are bits of money in different federal appropriations and then each state has its own appropriations on this. But you'd think there were people specializing in this topic who would have reasonable estimates. Maybe they just don't post them on the web. Or their sites come up low on Google.

Anchorage 24 Hour Film Competition Winner

Someone got here Sunday googling 24 hour film contest. Well, I knew there was one as part of the Anchorage International Film Festival back in December and that's where they got.

But last night at the Bear Tooth I learned there was another competition this past weekend. Before "Waltzing with Bashir" we got to "Oscar." The first video is from the Bear Tooth tonight when they explained the requirements of the competition and introduced the winner "Oscar".





And here's the winner straight from YouTube.

Keeping Up With Thai Crisis

Thaicrisis is another blog (in addition to Bangkok Pundit) where you can get a deeper understanding of what is happening in Thailand. The link is to the About page which has a brief overview of the blog and interesting comments.

This is another example of how blogs can give a much richer sense of what is happening than the Main Stream Media as events unfold.

It started with the bike pump

Martial chaos in Bangkok. Clues to check out on the Stevens' case. Local outrage about the comments of the Palin attorney general pick, but with hints his nomination isn't doing well. It was already afternoon when we finally got up - not sure I can still blame this on jet lag. And as I write I realize I totally forgot about the Songkran celebrations at the Thai Wat here in Anchorage. Taxes to get organized. And I found a website with links to Thai music videos - a great way to work on my Thai since they have the Thai words below. And unlike on Thai tv, I can stop them and play them again til I get it.

The relative warmth - low 40s, about 7˚C - and the rapidly disappearing snow were calling too. The deck was clear, the back and front yards are showing a lot more brown in just the few days we've been home.

So let's chuck everything and ride over to Suttons and look for some seeds, maybe even some seedlings.

But when I got the bikes out, J's tires were soft. The pump wasn't where it was supposed to be in the garage. I seemed to vaguely remember thinking about taking it to Thailand with us back in January, so where did it end up? Not in the two most likely places.



Then I looked into M's old room which has turned into our store room. We'd cleared out some closets and drawers and cabinets to give our house sitters some room. It got a little rough at the end as we just threw things in to get them out of the way before heading to the airport. Was it in there?

Well, sorting through the old stuff and getting rid of as much as we can was also on the list of todo's and maybe the pump was buried in there. About two hours later, with a lot more floor showing, I found the pump. But it was too late to go. We lived in two rooms in Chiang Mai quite comfortably. Certainly we can get rid of a lot of stuff in here.

Blue Shirts?

Before I left Chiang Mai on Monday, I joked about blue shirts and green shirts (in addition to the reds and the yellows) and now the blues have shown up. Basically, red shirts support the former prime minister Thaksin (the wikipedia summary leaves out the important point that he jumped bail and has since been convicted to two years in prison. Thus he's not in Thailand. It's in the entry way down near the end) who appeals to the poor. The yellow shirts support the current prime minister - Oxford educated Abhisit, called by some 'Obamark' because his nickname is Mark - and these, according to common belief (not necessarily truth) are mostly Bangkok middle and upper classes. I don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs of Thai politics and suggest readers read this and everything else with skepticism.

Mr. Kwai (kwai means water buffalo) has links to many Thai sources both in English and Thai. New Mandala and Bangkok Pundit (both linked on the right) are also decent (not necessarily neutral) sources as well.

Here's a comment from Mr. Kwai's post on red shirt demonstration and cancellation of the ASEAN summit. Note: honoring your parents is still very important in Thailand. Dissing them is a BIG DEAL.

chinesethai 11 April 2009 at 9:56 am

...FACT?
You obviously haven’t heard of the Blue Shirt before. The Blue Shirt belongs to Nevin’s faction. Actually, the Blue Shirt defected from the Red Shirt. Obviously, you are not aware that both colours have once clashed in Buriram when the Red Shirt threw rocks and fired bullets in front of his house in Buriram. That happened only a day after he announced giving his support to Abhisit.

Thailand’s English language media has disadvantages because news has to be translated into English while the situation keeps changing. CNN and BBC are also useless. Most of these journalists thought they were the experts but obviously they are telling you craps or half-truth such as the clip of Yellow Shirt shooting. They got shot first. The Yellow Shirt has to protect themselves when the police has taken the Red site. If you were them, would you be a sweet target? Common sense.

The country is unstable, yes. But if you are a well-wishing outsider and have that morality and neutrality, you are supposed to denounce anybody that will destroy this country, right?

And……may I re-post this?

90 Year-Old Mother of Jatuporn Prompan, Red Shirt Leader, calls her son to stop instigate chaos. “My son has not come home to visit me for 6 years.”

http://www.manager.co.th/Local/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=9520000040302

So what did Jatuporn reply? “She is just an illiterate villager.” (From Pro-Thaksin Matichon Online)

http://www.matichon.co.th/news_detail.php?newsid=1239250104&grpid=03&catid=01

Is the Red Shirt were the force for good when its leader has such background, deserting even his own mother?

Common Cause Checking Out Alaska

Seems like our best known export after oil - political corruption stories - has made some people believe that a chapter of Common Cause might be welcomed here.

Paul Brown, one of the driving forces behind the Alaska Repertory Theater back in the late 70s and 80s has been in town for a couple of weeks scoping out the viability of establishing a state chapter of the public interest non-profit in Alaska. A friend asked if I'd be interested in meeting with him and I said, "Sure." So, uncertain about how messy the streets might be on a bike, I drove a car for the first time in three months to our meeting.

Common Cause was founded in 1970 by John Gardner. A PBS webpage on Gardner says:

Common Cause became one of the staunchest advocates of campaign finance reform. In 1971, they sued both the Democratic and Republican parties for violating campaign fundraising and spending limits, and began to push federal and state governments to open up legislative hearings and governmental decision-making. Common Cause's crusade did not go unnoticed. After the group sued President Nixon's re-election campaign, John Gardner was put on his infamous "enemies list." After the Watergate scandal and various abuses of power by the Nixon Administration came to light, Common Cause was instrumental in getting the landmark campaign finance reform legislation of 1974 passed which put in place limits on contributions and disclosure requirements for campaigns.

According to the Common Cause website, today they are working to:

• Advance campaign reforms that make people and ideas more important than money
• Make certain that government is open, ethical and accountable
• Remove barriers to voting and ensure that our voting systems are accurate and accessible
• Increase the diversity of voices and ownership in media, to make media more responsive to the needs of citizens in a democracy and to protect the editorial independence of public broadcasting
• Uphold the rule of law by opposing any attempts to undermine the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights,
• Increase participation in the political process.

I knew the name - Paul Brown - sounded familiar but it wasn't til he started giving me some of his Alaska background that I realized who he was. I'm guessing that the Rep's high artistic standard back then is partly responsible for the high quality of theater we have in this small town far from the center of the arts universe.

We had an interesting discussion about lots of things including his mission here. There are a lot of non-profits here already, many doing overlapping work. The trick will be to work with them and not duplicate efforts. But it seems Paul has talked to most of the related organizations I could think of.

[I'd note that some of my friends have joked about not talking to me after they've seen my blog. I want to assure them and readers that when I meet with someone like I did yesterday, I get their permission before doing a post.]

Reviewing Comments

I've long taken the position that my preference was to leave comments unreviewed. They get up faster and take less of my time. That policy fits my general sense of free and open debate. However, I reserved the right to turn on 'review comments' if people violated my trust that they would post civil and respectful comments.

Well, yesterday I turned on the review comment feature. Anonymous (there appear to be at least two and maybe more - but one in particular I think that has led to this) has been posting long, rambling comments. OK, some people are better speaking than writing. I give people slack on that. I was more concerned about the tone when the comments first started appearing about a week ago, but they seemed to have some substance that was of relevance, though it was hard to be sure. They also made blatant, but unsubstantiated, allegations and characterizations about people that had a tone of self-righteousnous that bothered me. And they were repetitive. But I was hoping that they would evolve into more civil and informative comments.

One goal of this blog is to have a civil discussion. By this I mean that people are respectful of each other and the people they write about. That people present evidence for their allegations. They don't call each other names. They read what others write and respond directly to the parts they disagree with and explain why.

Yesterday there was another blizzard of comments that didn't meet any of those criteria. There are much worse comments on other blogs and this commenter does have something in mind. I was hoping he would reveal that with enough time. But I've had enough. Any single comment hasn't been that far over the line and I've left them up - about fifteen posted comments so far. But cumulatively they change the tone of this blog. I've criticized the ADN for not moderating their blogs and so I just decided the time I hoped wouldn't arrive, had arrived.

There are about ten comments awaiting approval now. I've discovered that Blogger gives me the choice of accepting or rejecting each comment. I can't even use the select and copy and paste feature.

Here's a part of a comment that is waiting for me to accept or reject. There are five or six more separate comments that appear to be from the same anonymous commenter awaiting approval:

Why should any ANON trust you, some have seen how the truth can be twisted when Ted is involved, and the raw power, for all most know you are just another in the TANK FINK for Ted, you showed your true colors, you think people are so gullible to trust you, & you think any are going to come to some sucker like you, as you delete this and other posts to slant things…
Like why would any even come to your and spill the whole thing. . .who in the hell are you, you proved you can’t be trusted, have some agenda. (LIKE CLUB TED, CLUB WEV)

Some bon Vo play boy with rich travel Money, you don’t mean shit to most hard working Americans, they see you as the reason why Alaska is seen as a big sucking machine to leave the US taxpayers the tab. SEF tax slaves.

One could argue that the commenter has some legitimate points and I shouldn't be picky about style. But the style here is a not-listening style. This person has lots to say, but doesn't seem ready to listen. The comments jump to conclusions without telling us how he got there. In the passage above he suggests he's talking for people other than himself ("most hard working Americans.") I've chosen this part because I'm the subject of the commenter's attack. So I'm posting those comments for all to see what he said. (There's more like that in other comments in the queue.) I'm not rejecting these because he is critizing me, but because of how he is talking about me and others. Being the subject of his ire also gives me more perspective on what he's saying about others.

So, I'm going to invite all posters to do a few things if they want me to push the accept button:

1. Be respectful of others. If you think they've done something wrong, identify the specific act that was wrong and point to specific evidence. If there is no specific evidence, point out the circumstantial evidence that leads you to your conclusion. For example in the second part of the snippet above, I think that you are saying something like, "Steve, your traveling suggests to me that you're rich. That reinforces people's image of Alaskans as sucking up all their tax dollars." Then I could ask in response:

• How do you define rich? How much money does one have to have to be rich? $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, $1,000,000? A billion?
  
• Is being rich bad? Don't most Americans strive to be, if not rich, at least comfortable? Don't they continue to vote for rich politicians?
• Do you differentiate between people who got their money from corruption and scam and those who worked for it and made good decisions about how to use it? Or whether they spend it for luxuries for themselves or to help others?
  
• And by the way, it costs a lot less to live three months in Thailand than it does to live three months in Anchorage. And if you read the blog carefully, you'd know our lifestyle there was pretty modest - bikes and walking were our main form of transportation and we were in a modest two room apartment which cost less than $10 a day. And those certainly weren't pictures of first class in the plane.
  

I'm not saying you have to write the way I write, but that you present your points rather than making slurs so that people can respond sensibly.


2. If you make allegations about others, present evidence.


3. Try not to repeat yourself too much.

This is not hard. The only comments I've deleted over the last two and a half years were spam and other ads that had nothing to do with the post.

Now let me address a reasonable challenge: Don't you believe in free speech? Why are you for censorship?

First, I'm a private citizen writing a blog. I'm not the government. The First Amendment protections of free speech are about the US government abridging free speech. It doesn't say that every private citizen who writes something has to also publish everything anyone else wants to say. If you need to tell the world your story, start your own blog. You already have access to a computer and setting one up is free on blogspot.

Second, the point of free speech and debate is for people to listen to different points of view, different facts, and to have conversations so that people from different perspectives can gain insight. After reading your posts for almost a week now, it's my sense that you are interested in the giving part of debate but not the listening part.

If you have something to say to me personally, email me. There's a link in my profile. Show me that I'm wrong and that you are reasonable and listen and adjust your perspective when warranted. Show me you can talk to someone without either buttering them up with compliments or slamming them with insults. That you can find a place somewhere in between - like polite normal conversation. Hotmail and others offer free email accounts that are reasonably untraceable. Certainly I couldn't trace them.

Since blogger makes it extremely difficult to edit comments, and since people would probably accuse me of distorting their comments if I did, I'll just make a judgment on all the incoming posts to either allow or delete. That's just the way it is. I'd rather have the comments go up right away. As I say, you can start your own blog if you don't want to conform to the standards I'm setting for my blog. I appreciate your visits here because they have pushed me to think through this more than I have before.

[I would note that I did accept a comment in the previous post on anonymous commenters that speculated that someone had skipped his meds. I thought about it before pushing accept. I think that mental illness is a serious and poorly understood issue everywhere. And medical science doesn't know that much and treatments can sometimes be worse than the original problem. ]

We're Home

Our house sitters left a very neat and clean house for us, plus this basket of fruit. Thanks! Our street is almost clear of snow, and the 1˚C weather didn't feel bad at all.