Day 10 Wed, November 10, 2010 Solo Tim Said goodbye to Bonnie early yesterday morning, which left me with no companions to accompany me through Port-au-Prince. After a quick breakfast, I headed down the mountain to make my way back to the US Embassy. I went into the Daily Cafe for water and Coke, then followed my directions to the Tabarre School, which was quite nearby. There I met Gladys, who was very welcoming and gracious. She introduced me to the Bishop and I demonstrated the laptop and Etoys. I've become so accustomed to my demonstrations that I fear I'm being too automatic, though from people's responses, this doesn't seem to be the case. Gladys spoke briefly about Wilson Jeudy's presidential campaign, of which she is the campaign manager. We then toured the school and showed the laptop to the 4th/5th grade class. This school seems quite well behaved in an engaged and friendly way. As usual, the children simply loved the laptop and could not wait to play with it themselves. After lunch at the Daily Cafe, I made my way along Rue Tabarre towards my next stop. Traffic was at a standstill, so I tried a "yellow (aka paved) route" on Google maps, to find that it was anything but. It did take me through the middle of some very large tent camps. After nearly two weeks here, I'm sad to say that very little surprises me anymore. The harshness I drive through every day seems to blur. As I write this, I realize I didn't even try to take a photo of these camps, as I have so many more. Truly the one thing missing from the photos is the scope ... just how many people are living in these temporary havens. Eventually I reached Sineas, the camp city I was visiting. Sara and Darma (both from an organization called AMURT) introduced me to the school's teachers and administrators. Their approached seemed quite well thought out, with an emphasis on organic sustainability such as composting toilets and hydroponic gardens. The children and school were impressive to see. I then drove with Sara to their other school (Amsai), this time in a physical structure that was damaged by the earthquake. The teachers and students at this school were likewise impressive. I watched dance, art, and karate classes. There was an air about the place I can only describe as "freedom" .. a great place for a pilot. Four of the teachers joined me on my drive back up to Petionville. I four-wheeled up the mountain and talked with Merline and her children (John was away on business) and easily, easily, fell asleep.

Jennifer, I hope that Finbar came in. Our cats must have felt the weather coming because when we got home late Friday afternoon, they all came right indoors, including the one who usually stays out after dark and makes me worry. Larry, I know people eat the tender vines/shoots of regular English peas and sugar snap type peas, so I don't know why you couldn't do the same with Austrian winter peas. I hope you and Madge can catch up on your rest and stay healthy while you're busy taking care of sick folks. dbarron, Pouring down snow? Like thundersnow? That would be so cool. I love thundersnow. We have two dogs who bark and howl at the thunder, and one who goes into the bathroom and hides from it. Currently our 2 barkers/howlers are howling at the sound of emergency sirens because there is a serious motor vehicle accident near our home (not really close, but close enough that the dogs can hear the sirens from the fire trucks, police cars and ambulance). Tim is gone to that, so they are watching out the window for him to come home and, in the meantime, doing their howling thing. It is impossible to sleep through anything in this house. Once the sirens stop, the two dogs will stop. Or, I can tell them to stop howling and they will stop. For a minute. Then when they think I've gone back to bed or whatever, they start up again. They try to be good but they love to howl. We used to have a dog named Biscuit (RIP, sweet doggie) who howled along with opera music and truly loved to sing along with it, but other than that, he never howled at anything. These two blue heeler mixes we have now believe they were put on earth to howl at everything---sirens, the howling of coyotes, the howling wind, etc. When the fire pagers woke us up around 3:40 a.m., I looked out the window and heavy snow with big, wet fluffy flakes was coming down like crazy. The temperature, which was around 58 degrees right around midnight, now is sitting right there at 32 degrees at our house, but shows 33 degrees at the nearest Mesonet station. The snow covers everything....the ground, the evergreen shrubs and trees, the lawn furniture, and even my greenhouse. I don't know how long it has been falling. What the forecasters had said was that if any snow fell this far south, it likely would be mixed with rain and would not accumulate. Well, there's no rain mixed with this and it is accumulating. Our ground is pretty warm (the mesonet map shows our soil temperature is 47 degrees at a depth of 2 inches) so I would think the snow will melt away pretty quickly---perhaps even before sunrise, so people here might miss seeing it unless they're awake in the middle of the night for some reason. So, I got the longed-for snow. I don't think we'll be outside tomorrow building snowmen or anything but I am enjoying watching those big flakes coming down. It definitely is not Spring yet here, notwithstanding yesterday's official high temperature of 69 degrees. I checked our weather just now, and the NWS extended the Wind Advisory, which had excluded southern OK, to us at 3:13 a.m. I had been amused by the fact that the Texas county that surrounds our part of our county on three sides had a Wind Advisory and yet we did not. Was NWS-Norman thinking the wind would just stop at the Red River? Even before I went to sleep last night, we had wind gusts as high as 40 mph, while the folks near us with a Wind Advisory had wind gusts in the mid 30s. So I suppose after several hours of those higher wind gusts, NWS-Norman finally decided to add us to the Wind Advisory. Better late than never, but who is awake at 3:13 a.m. to notice such things? NWS-Norman always does this, by the way, adding us later on to Wind Advisories long after NWS-Fort Worth put the Texas counties surrounding us under one. This is a persistent thing here, and I don't know why it is that way. When the Fort Worth Stock Show folks last evening cancelled the scheduled Saturday morning Stock Show parade for only the second time in its history (and people on FB instantly were outraged by the annual parade being cancelled), I knew that they were expecting snow or sleet down there because someone mentioned they didn't want the horses to slip and fall on the dangerous, slick roadways. I had explained to Lillie earlier in the day that Friday was the opening day of the stock show and we'd try to take her and her younger sister down there to the stock show one day during its run if we didn't get the traditional Stock Show weather of ice and snow. While they had a gorgeous sunny and warm day for the opening day, it appears they have snow/sleet/ice for the first night of the show. I doubt it will last for the three week duration of the show. Dawn

Central OH. I was raised near Cincinnati - my husband and I moved to San Diego to find work (for him, a carpenter) in late 1979 due to the recession - construction and factory jobs had crashed to a halt. I stayed there after we split; really felt more at home there than I ever had in OH. But, after almost 13 years, the cost of living was becoming a strain and I wanted some family near as well - so back to OH, this time to Columbus, though, and I have found it to be a very pleasant place to live. Lots of parks, cycling and hiking, great live music, very many good and varied restaurants including lots of ethnic (various African, middle eastern, and other-than-Chinese Asian.) All sorts of activity. The past two summers have been hotter and more humid than the first 25, but I still find them tolerable (I like heat) and the winters are still pretty moderate -- the past 2 weeks of erratic weather notwithstanding - I don't mind them at all. Still, I think about trying another part of the country. I would like to go back to the San Diego area but do not think it would be a wise financial move.

Ooh just reminded me in the mid seventies ( my best guess- 74-76) I saw Patti Smith in some very very small venue which might have been a basement of someplace. She spoke quite a bit and I can recall she said that Baudelaire was the first Rastafarian. It was all over my head, but I knew I was witnessing someone very special. I also remember seeing Bette Midler at the Copacabana maybe a year after I saw Patti Smith. I was absolutely astounded at her energy. She really put on an amazing show and the venue was really small enough to have real banter going on with the audience. She was so sharp and quick- kind of how she comes across but it was so authentic.