More beautiful snow came during the night. I wish I were a skier. No plane to get me home today. Tomorrow they say. I'm at the airport drinking a coffee and eating a blueberry muffin. It's nice to sit here. Big windows look out on snowy trees and cars. The guy at the table next to me has a long black canvas bag with his skis in it. I'll sit a while longer, then a cab or shuttle of some kind to take me back into town to the motel. On the ride back to town yesterday, the driver pointed out a moose. The roads and sidewalks can be very slippery here. But they won't use salt. It's not good for that moose or the other wildlife. 

I'm sitting in the Jackson, Wyoming airport. My Delta flight was canceled. Big snow. The road the shuttle van took to get me to the airport is now closed. I'll sit here for awhile before heading back to the motel when the road is open and I'll try again tomorrow. When I was at the motel for a week, I watched some TV news shows. I don't have a TV in my apartment in New York, so I only see some news that I get streaming on my laptop. I watch Anderson Cooper and PBS NewsHour. In the motel I sampled some other stuff. It all seemed too much, especially on a big screen. Same topics with different hosts each hour. The topics are certainly important. But I'll be glad to get home tomorrow and get away from the blizzard of conversation about them. 

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.