"It is a tragedy, perhaps, that human beings can get so much energy and enthusiasm from hate. If you want to feel ten feet tall and as though you could run a hundred miles without stopping, hate beats pure cocaine any day. Hitler resurrected a beaten, bankrupt, half-starved nation with hatred and nothing more. Imagine that."

Wasn't the snow out of this world awesome Joe took pictures to send to Ann and Korel so they could see them. Korel said, "I don't ever remember snow like that," She loves the cold weather and we tease her she needs to live at the North Pole. She's Ann's daughter that is not well, and she's such a sweetheart, so we all spoil her when we can. Joe and I watched it just get heavier and heavier on the trees, and our old evergreen tree was a picture to behold. We needed the moisture so everyone is very thankful for it. You could rake off the top of the snow and under it was water, water. Joe and I rode around last week one day, and it's so dry at the farm. Remember when you were a kid you could get out and build snowmen, slide down the hills, at rotan we had an old hill, called the school house hill just north of where the schools are built now. Oh! what fun we had sliding down that hill and building snowmen and having snow ball fights!!!!! Those days are gone, the old hill has been flat and the kids have to fun them fun somewhere else. Well folks this one is short, nothing going on in Aspermont, Covid is raging, I have been sick but it's not covid thank goodness, but 24 hour virus, then on top of that my allergy has been unreal, so Carol has been a good girl, all she has done is set in her chair, and watch TV with Joe, he found out he could cook again, and he's a good one. Visit with you next week

"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

Pray for someone It doesn't matter who. As you go through your day lift someone up in prayer.

“The fetus wished to live. Stubbornly, sometimes astonishinglythe fetus struggled to live. But the power of its life-or its death-had to reside with the mother. No other alternative was possible.” ~ Joyce Carol Oates, A Book of American Martyrs

WARNING: this essay might be a difficult read. It is an important read, though, for each of us.

There must be a strong pull for people who grew up in Merkel, left to have successful careers, then returned to their hometown. I met a bunch of them recently. They are confident, poised and happy to be back home. One is a former NASA scientist who is now writing poetry. Another was a real estate mogul in Austin who returned to Merkel and opened two restaurants. Roger Moore had an award-winning advertising agency for 25 years, and then came home to manage Merkel’s Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development.

I don’t think I’ll find many that will disagree that our nation is in turmoil. From an election that a large minority of our friends and neighbors feel was stolen, to an assault on our nation’s Capital, the concern about what will come next is eerie.

As with most of you, I have thoughts about January 6 and the events at our nation’s Capitol. Of course, I want to write about “it.” My gut is telling me not to go there this time.

The 87th session of the Texas Legislature opened Tuesday with COVID-19 encompassing every aspect of what the lawmakers do, according to new House Speaker Dade Phelan. “COVID, obviously, it will be a blanket over the entire session,” Phelan told his hometown TV station, KFDM Channel 6, in Beaumont.