Brrrr! In Spanish, I am called friolenta, that is, someone especially sensitive to cold. I should just live fulltime in the tropics or maybe in Florida or Hawaii, where I have daughters and also good friends. But now I've bought a house here in West Virginia where I live with my son and his dog Willow The is dog sleeping right next to me noe as I tap the computer keys.
Here's the local forecast from Google:
Based on current forecasts, Berkeley Springs, WV will experience very cold temperatures through early February 2026, with daily highs in the low 20s to mid-30s°F and nightly lows dropping into the single digits to teens. Conditions will range from sunny to partly cloudy, with a chance of precipitation increasing toward mid-week.
I'm so glad to be back on the computer again after a serious glitch that apparently my
daughter in Hawaii was able to fix remotely. But cold weather does seem to be affecting computer access.
I also had experienced a bout of vertigo earlier in the day, just like
I had in Honduras for 2 days running during my visit there in June 2024.
Fortunately, this recent episode lasted only a few hours. It's a very disorienting experience
to feeleverything spinning all around you, keeping you off-balance, though without any pain
or discomfort.
When we drove past the Potomac River, we saw ice and snow out on top with water stilll
flowing underneath.
From a lifelong friend in Vermont, I jsut reeived a long message:
Thank you for your sweet memories of my mom, Wanda. The last weeks of her life were so hard for me and my husband in taking care of her, even with all the help we had, ao that it has been hard to remember the better times. Your words have helped me remember the better times. During her life, she was quite pessimistic and negative, without a sense of humor, but in her last years, she began to see the humor in life. My husband was very good about pointing out silly things she would say or do in a way that allowed her to see how foolish they were, and she could then laugh at them. It was shocking, and refreshing to see her laugh at herself. It was grand.
Here is the photo of myself holding onto Jackie, the ram. My mother took that photo of me when I was age 9 and surely she sent a copy to her family in Egypt. I’m sure it must have shocked them to see such a thing. My mother's life in Egypt was so drastically different from our lives out here on the farm in southern Vermont.
Yet my friend's mother Wanda was lucid until the very end, although she always spoke English with an accent. She had been quite brave to go from her privileged status in Egypt to an unknwon life in rural Vermont with her new husband. He had married her after a very brief courthship in Egypt where they had met during his worldwide travels. It was a classic case of "love at first sight," They had 3 children. Mother Wanda lived long after the death of her husband to almost age 106. In her last days, she had 2 Spanish-speaking caregivers who had somehow made it to the family's remote rural Vermont farm. I spoke with them both by phone.
So we still need immigrants like the 2 caregivers helping out my friends in Vermont because native-born Americans are simply not producing enough children to do the jobs that need to be done. Our US birthrate now only averages 1.6 children per woman, when 2.1 is needed just to keep our population at current levels. Immigrants have always helped fill in the gaps in this country and there is still room for more. Accepting more immigrants would be quite helpful, though not as many as would want to come. We certainly should not be actually deporting those who are already here. No workable system for screening and admitting immigrants has ever been developed anywhere. We could actually use a few moree right now in West Virginia, where the population is in decline and "help wanted" signs are posted everywhere. .
DOJ Removes New Epstein Files That Mention Wild Trump Sex Allegations, Including Rape
What will happen to those files now is uncertain. Donald Trump would probably like to have them all immediately destroyed.
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Trump sues IRS and Treasury for $10 billion over leaked tax records
Donald Trump as the pressident is in charge of the government, so is he now suing himself since he is responisible for how the government actually operates? As president, he should have undertaken neausres to protect tax records.
Dozens of faith leaders arrested in Washington protest against Trump immigration
policie
Thousands rally in Minneapolis as immigration anger boils
Is this now a US civil war? People want to see criminals arrested, but not those who
are peaceful though lacking legal status.
And people have not forgotten native-born US citizens killed by ICE.
Chicago mayor tells police to probe allegations of illegal activity by immigration
agents
Seattle's mayor has done the same. Is our country now embroiled in a civil war?
So it all depends on the judge hearing the case what the decison will be. Judges don't
necessarily decide just according to the legal merits of a case, but also based on their own
personal opinions and preferences. Justice is not blind.
Donald Trump may never have his face carved on Mount Rushmore nor win the Nobel
Peace Prize, but he wants to leave his imprint on Washington, DC,
=======================================
More now from the Epsein files:
Woman Told FBI Trump Abused Her at 13, Epstein Files Reveal
She also claimed to haev bitten him in a very sensitive place.Epstein Victim Gave Bombshell Testimony on Trump and Ghislaine
===================================
WML, a little girl actually born here in the US, was recently deported to Honduras. What did she do? Now the deportation of a 5-year-old boy, also born here, has been stayed. Donald Trump may want to abolish birthright citizenship, but it has not yet been abolished. Of course, members of his own family are completely exempt from any and all rules. Probably wife Melania is actually here illegally, as she came on a visitor's visa that then expired. But after that, she got pregnant by Donald Trump and had a son, so that was even better than a visa. Now let's just deport that whole Trump clan, including the Donald himself, and send them all back to Scotland, his own mother's birthplace. He himself should not have birthright citizenship according to the rules he wants to impose on everyone else.
Judge orders US to release 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his dad from custody
by Tuesday
======================================
OK RFK Jr. and Donald J. Trump, you know that many children will die and some will be affected for life. What about promoting routine vaccinations again for childhood diseases? Vaccination doesn;t always prevent illness, but nearly always reduces the severity if it should still occur, something which actually happens only in a tiny fraction of cases.
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Fox News, 32-year-old woman found dead outside during winter storm, latest Kentucky death
She reportedly was found frozen to death in her own front yard.
Wash, Post, Israeli airstrikes kill 32 in Gaza, Palestinian officials say
Israel is apparently still attacking Gaza and still killing civilians. With Donald Trump going crazy now all over the world, making abrupt decisions willy nilly, then now deciding to focus on his triumphal arch, we took our eyes off the ball on Israel/Gaza, giving Israel and Netanyahu free reign to commit war crimes. (Trump has a very short attention span,. Greenland now seems to be all but forgotten.) )
A friend and former neighbor back in DC likes to experiment in the kitchen. After all, everybody has to eat. She recently made an unconventional pizza which I am sorry not to
be there to actually try. Photos below show the pizza before and after baking
it’s a pizza but w/ a lighter, airier crust, unlike the flat dense ones for standard pizza. i used whatever i had lying around the house to make this. my aim was to ‘master’ the dough for the crust, a combination of three diff flours (Italian bread flour, rice flour, and spelt).
And what is this? I'm not quite sure, but it has suddenly popped up, so
here it is now. .
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