You can buy The New York Times here in Jackson, Wyoming at Pearl Street Bagels where I go every morning. It's a warm small place it seems the whole town frequents. There's a line to the door often. Some people are in big ski pants. Some others have cowboy faces and first names that might be Dalton. It's not the only place that sells the paper, and you can read it at the library which is where I read it. My college friends who like Trump (that at first shocked me, not so much when I think back on our Catholic rearing) do not read the Times, won't read the Times. 

Reading another LA Times article about the LA schools and the recent teachers strike, I noticed an adjective the writer used to describe the conditions in the schools. It shocks me every time I read about their schools. How did it get that way? OK, Proposition 13 in 1978 limited real estate taxes. But how did people, how did the paper, how did the politicians let it stay that way?



'...because the protest underscored the threadbare conditions and overcrowded classrooms in the Los Angeles Unified School District ...'

The hours at the Teton County Library on weekdays are 9:30-8:30. At my Manhattan branch library the weekday hours are 10:00-6:00. The Teton County Library is open on Sunday. My Manhattan branch is not open on Sunday.
 

It was -7 when I woke up at 6:00 this morning in The Virginian motel here in Wyoming. Startling blue brilliant sky out the window when I finally got out from under the blankets and opened the blinds. The snow squeaked under my shoes when I walked to get breakfast. I had oatmeal and scrambled eggs in a room full of folks in heavier clothes and shoes than mine. Now I'm at the library which is bright and  glorious. New York's libraries should have a kids section and a teen section like this one. They're not even close. You get mad when you compare.

In the Salt Lake City airport heading next to Jackson, Wyoming where I go four times a year to see my youngest daughter and her three daughters. I read The New Yorker on the four-hour flight from JFK. I read a short chapter of a novel too. I had two coffees and a KIND bar. Everyone had some screen or book going. Humans like to look at rectangles. I think that has much to do with why people stare at their phones so much. Why we like photos. Why we look at our computer. Why we watch TV till bedtime. 

Too cold to hold the sign this morning and it'll be that way all week while I'm away it shows on my phone. I'm glad for the cold. I feel guilty when I miss a day, but guilt isn't really what I feel. I feel like the sign's message is important and I'm the one who holds it and I feel like doing it every day. If the Super Bowl started at 8:00 a.m. on a weekday, I'd miss the first half. No, it isn't guilt. It's more a feeling of regret when I'm out of town over a missed opportunity. Stay warm.
 

'Altogether, if I had to pick one place to hang out anywhere, from New York to Cape Town and Australia to Hong Kong, a bookstore would be it.'
                  ― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road