from The Anglican Digest, PENTECOST 1999
St. Mark's Chapel was dressed for Advent and then "greened" for Christmastide just as the Church Year dictates. The calendar reported that winter began on the afternoon of the 21st of December with the 22nd being the first full day of "official" winter. Mother Nature followed suit with a range of 20 to 200 here at Hillspeak.
Then came New Year's Day, PAtient Wife and I, as has been our pleasure for many years, watched the New Year's Day concert in Vienna on PBS. The concert finished. The first two encores, including the obligatory "Blue Danube Waltz," concluded and Maestro Mazel turned to the audience to direct their participation in the equally obligatory "Radetzky March" -- and the screen went blank and the Farm House went dark.
Thanks to a gas log in one of the two fireplaces in the old house we remained tolerably comfortable. However, without electricity our refrigerator and freezer soon lost their ability to keep food. What to do? With temperatures over the period of the outage ranging from 00 to 100 it was a simple matter to store frozen food on the screened but otherwise open front porch.
Temperatures remained wintry but relatively comfortable for the first working days of the new year and we were all able to follow our usual activities at home and in the Twin Barns. Until Friday, the 8th, that is. The Ozark's ups and downs and twists and turns turned to ice overnight and nobody, save the Trustees' Warden, could get to work. I had the Twin Barns to myself (with the company of two cats) all day.
That is why those of you who called in book orders and TAD requests and the like were not greeted by the usual dulcet tones of our secretary, but by the septuagenarial voice of this old codger.
805 CR 102 - EUREKA SPRINGS AR 72632-9705
PHONE: 501-253-9701 FAX: 501-253-1277 E-MAIL:speak@speakinc.org
