Still snowing

It continues to snow. We have about six inches of snow on
top of ice. The first snow was really wet, but the
temperature has dropped so the new snow is quite light and
fluffy.

Jeanne called this morning and we had a long chat on the
phone. I always enjoying hearing from my kids!

In the New York Times this morning there was an article
about the problems of pollution from dirty diesel trucks in
China. A woman shopkeeper was saying that by the end of the
day, from being in her open-air shop, her face is black from
soot. This took me back.

In 1948 I worked in Rochester, N. Y. at Bausch and Lomb optical
company. I was a clerk in the Engineering Department. One
of my tasks was to type mimeograph templates and then run
off multiple copies of various reports and sometimes of
drawings. I had quite a number of these to do each day
and the mimeograph machine was in a corner of the very
large room in which I and a dozen engineers worked.
The building was not air conditioned so I was happy to have
the window open by the machine. I soon discovered,
however, that after a session of running the copies
off on the machine one side of my face was black from
the soot coming in the window.

Although, I think our air is cleaner now, it isn't as clean
as it should be even here in pristine Boulder. I work one
day a week at the Carnegie Historic Library. I noticed when
I first started working that the flag in front of the building
was gray and ragged. Sometime later it was replaced, but now
the new one is not ragged, but the white stripes are gray,
not white.

E-mail from Julie late yesterday confirmed that she, too,
has breast cancer. I feel really sad for her; it has been
a difficult year already. Her dad is in the terminal stages
of cancer and has been released home, but he is not doing
well.