The darkest days of the year are here, the darkest days of the year. Today, the sun came up at 9:30 a.m. and set at 4:15 p.m. I took the dogs for a walk after cleaning Tyra up – she has the splats again. I put a wrap on her tail, and a blanket on her back. I also put her in Tinni’s pen.

Aside from the splats Tyra seems just fine. I let the horses out of the pen in the mornings, and like the others, she ran around the yard, bucking and doing sidekicks.

Not enough time to ride. This pains me. I guess I must delegate more to other volunteers. Me, I’m a volunteer. This pains me because if I had been working, and now worked, I’d have enough money to purchase land. I have let my horses down.

Jana's quilt

Dark days and nights lead to dark thoughts. I read tonight that 4 million common murres died recently – they think because of climate change. The other thing killing birds is avian flu. So bird poop contains avian flew. (Not a typo there). Cows and goats eat the grass, and they catch this. Has me wondering. If Sassy has a baby and we drink her milk, and drink it raw, will we then catch this flew? And how will this affect larger animals, like horses? Ironically, our chickens: Ruth, Bader, and Ginsberg are safe because they live most of the year in their pen.

The planet is dying slowly. The suffering on the part of those of us who care about animals has already begun. No, we won’t be around forever. But the real anguish comes in watching the wildlife suffer. Too, the number of caribou in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is down.

How can anyone with a clear conscience not see this and want to do something about it?

We need to stop breeding and let other creatures breed.

My contribution, that is my attempts to forestall this wanton disregard for the loss of habitat and life, is to work at getting books into the hands of appreciative readers and also envisioning literacy to change lives – in both ways broadening world views.

I don’t know what, if any, consequences there will be to taking this approach. It’s a gamble. Being careful and promoting the project by word of mouth and eschewing social media posts will contribute to project longevity. So far, so good. So far, really good.

I do want to resume writing. Like horseback riding, this has again fallen by the wayside. The sort of work that I’m doing is not without its drawbacks.

It actually was sort of an ideas day, what with me making the connection between quilts and literacy, and also considering partnering with the Valley Quilt Guild. I do pretty well with associative thinking, and so today I also thought about how we might partner with a Daycare Center. We might make them quilt pillows and give them like books.

I am going to lobby to have yesterday’s funds put toward the quilt literacy project. This seems to me to be a very good idea.

Next: 342.12/16/24: And So