Lousy Smarch Weather; Little Libraries; Snow

The first part of the title a Simpsons reference, the kind that're easy when you're my age (xennial, late millennial, Oregon Trail Generation, whatever you prefer). The details of that episode (Homer's got a misprinted calendar, that's all I remember) are long lost to me, but "lousy smarch weather" has been a phrase my partner and I have used forever when we get a patch of wintery weather when it should ostensibly be spring. Last night, it snowed a bit. Not much, maybe half an inch, but enough to cover up all the bare ground exposed by a week of mild temperatures that suddenly turned cold again.

We've for years had a little library, unused in the garage: one of our friends is a shop teacher, and made it for us as a birthday present to my partner. But we needed to install it, and in that way that you do, we never did. Last year we went to the states with our friend for a concert. Her husband stayed behind to house-sit; he wasn't a huge fan of the act, and was looking for, as he put it, "a relaxing weekend of drinking beer and hanging out with the dogs."

"Hypothetically," he said, "if I were to put up the little library, where would you want it?"

So we picked a spot just off our driveway, on our property line, and far enough up that we hoped the snow plows wouldn't destroy it come winter (they didn't this year!). And we put in our books: some old poetry books from me, mysteries and thrillers from my partner.

It's seen a little use. Our neighbours put some books in, and on Halloween, a roaming pack of teenage girls made off with the copy of "Spare" the neighbours had put in, and which I was meaning to read (good for them!). This morning, the library's slanted roof held a couple faint lines of powdery snow, the glass on the door slightly frosted. Like me, it survived another winter. Something good about books offered for free to those who want them. There's a little library south of us that in the summer has adjacent dishes of water for passing dogs. Our dogs know about this, and pull their way over there, every time. Right now the world seems shitty, impossibly shitty. But among all this are good people doing good things for neighbours and friends, reminding us of the importance of living in a community first, and a nation last.