Lots of new avatars around here.... yours looks really nice, too Karen.

Thanks Heidi----that is my brothers new puppy.. Ginger and Sissy weren't too happy when I got home!

Here's da mows . . .
 

Must I do all the work around here?

. . .
Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, --
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
The cock his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.
. . .

ditto....:)

Karen, I have worked construction my entire life in San Diego/Orange/Los Angeles/Ventura Counties....if he was around here we may have passed....

You guys are too funny! Karen & Gary I like your new avatars! Can I join the I AM COLD CLUB...it is 22 degrees outside...we just returned from being gone 8 days and I had the house turned down to 53 degrees...I AM FREEZING!

Gary--he has never been out that way before except for one time when he traveled with the company Truswal to a truss manufacturer company in Rosewood. Probably 30 years ago. Other than that he has mostly been in Colorado.

Wanring - Hoary Swarm coming ...
 

Warning, TMI, Ruth, can I talk about the haory swarm on a family thread?

. . .
Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingëd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
. . .

It is getting colder---- 19 degrees now!!! Come on Springtime!!!

I watch (by way of remote) a college bowl game...an NFL game and a movie on binge drinking....

and still...and still

the thread lives....

off to bed....

enjoy the blood

according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary

Main Entry: hoary
Pronunciation: \ˈhȯr-ē\
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): hoar·i·er; hoar·i·est
Date: 1530
1 : gray or white with or as if with age
2 : extremely old : ancient <hoary legends>
— hoar·i·ness noun

You undoubtedly knew this, Bill, so this is for the benefit of the barbarians among us. Ruth, being classically educated, will surely not object to the word.

Thanks, dutchgirl, I feel less vulgar now.

. . .
So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule* traced with lines
Of Nature's geometric signs,
In starry flake, and pellicle**,
All day the hoary meteor fell;
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
. . .

But, of course, you already know:
* spherule: little sphere.
** pellicle: thin film.

We do try to keep certain standards here, don't we?

Slipping in a last shot before they wake:

. . .
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below, --
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
In its slant spendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa's leaning miracle.
. . .

We are still alive this morning I see.

6 more till the kill.

Nothing to see here...


move along folks...move along....

I should just kill it now! In two hours I'll be on my way to Ottawa, the Nation's Capital and will miss the

I'll help a little RUTH...but only for you!

the race is on...go get it....

oh COME ON!!!

I gotta pee....

WARNING: roused, harem, joy.
 

. . .

A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted: "Boys, a path!"
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy?)
Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
To guard our necks and ears from snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through.
And, where the drift was deepest, made
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we had read
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
With many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp's supernal powers.
We reached the barn with merry din,
And roused the prisoned brutes within.
The old horse thrust his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about;
The cock his lusty greeting said,
And forth his speckled harem led;
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
And mild reproach of hunger looked;
The hornëd patriarch of the sheep,
Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep,
Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot.

. . .

Bill did it!!!!
Kill, Ruth, kill!!!

What a bunch of losers!!!!!!!!!

Losers? Some one say losers? Ha...I am learning much poise here... thanks to my literary posters! And to think I thought about killing the tread with:
Jack be Nimble....

I see we did it AGAIN.

Good to see you Operator - hope Christmas didn't mellow your style.

Glad to see you back!!! And with your usual style and grace. We missed you,girl.

are we that screwed up we can't even kill a freakin' thread?

Request a mercy killing
 

. . .
All day the gusty north-wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
No church-bell lent its Christian tone
To the savage air, no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary-voicëd elements,
The shrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Beyond the circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown
To have an almost human tone.
. . .

[645 lines to go.]

Warning: thongful.
 

. . .

. . .
Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling's eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends -- the few
Who yet remain -- shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures of old days;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth,
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze!
And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,
Or lilies floating in some pond,
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.



[All done; no lines to go. This thread may die. No replacement is required.]

Why don't we just ddddddddrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggg gggg this out BARGOO and RUTH.....

Bargoo, please put Bill's poem out of our misery and kill off this thread!

Not tonight I have a headache......Oh, scuse me were talking about Threadkiller, so here goes see you at Fantastic Fifteen.

Dammit! I missed being here but dim sum in Ottawa was great!