2019 - Day 1/364 - Tuesday...Paragon...

Ugh. A new year. And the beginning of the eleventh year of this journal. This is the 3,561st post. I have no idea what will go on this year, but the odds are the really interesting stuff will be documented much less than the really dull and uninteresting stuff. There is a lot to be said for consistency, but not necessarily in relation to this blog. Whatever. It is cold here today on the edge of nowhere. The temperatures were consistently in the 40s, but it was grey and cloudy and windy, which has led me to declare that it is f*cking freezing outside. We have has a fire in the stove for the last couple days now, and I expect we will keep it going at least through the weekend. Barney the cat (the barn cat) is still going strong. We feed him every evening, and we suspect that what he doesn't eat is consumed by raccoons. He has been hanging around for several years, but he is still shy and skittish. He has secret hiding places (we know where a couple of them are), and we guess he is happy to be on his own. We also expect he is a 'he', assuming that if he were a she, there would have been baby Barney's at some point along the way. If you look closely, behind the truck tire, you can see his head and tail. Maybe you need to squint a little bit too!

So, Happy New Year to you all, and I hope if you made any resolutions that you can keep them for as long as you like. I have not made any resolutions for the last couple years, and that suits me just fine.

I am crazy enough as it it!

Paragon - Noun: a model of excellence or perfection. "What a piece of work is a man!...in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!" -- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1600-1601

Did You Know? Paragon derives from the Old Italian word paragone, which literally means "touchstone." A touchstone is a black stone that was once used to judge the purity of gold or silver. The metal was rubbed on the stone and the color of the streak it left indicated the metal's quality. In modern English, both touchstone and paragon comes from the Greek parakonan, meaning "to sharpen," from the prefix para- ("alongside of") and akone, meaning "whetstone."