But this year has been the strangest winter weather-wise that I can remember in my 37 years. We’ve had 7 inches of snow so far in Boston, none of which has stuck for more than 24 hours. The average snowfall by the end of January is 44 inches, and I don’t have the numbers for last year, but I’m guessing at least 80. Last year the snow was piled in ugly, sludgy-icy, black piles on the streets, as hard as cement if you should brush up against one as you parallel parked. The sidewalks were icy in parts, sludgy in parts, so that every time I ventured out I either fell, or got soaked, or both. It was really pretty, especially in the “green” parts of the city. But it mostly just made life harder, and made me feel claustrophobic; trapped in snow and winter with another two months to go.

But this year I have been slowly relaxing. I was tensed for battle, marking the days that the sunset would read 4:30, 4:45, 5:00, and the days that the average temperature would stop going down (January 16th) and start going back up (January 25th). But those days have passed anticlimactically (and, interestingly, anitclimatically [not a real word, but a West Wing reference: "It was 'anticlimactic,' not 'anticlimatic!' 'Anticlimatic' means 'against the weather!"]). The few wintery days have been balanced by sunny, springlike days in the 40s and 50s. I’ve been out walking and biking, and taking the kids to the playground. Normally at the end of January I would be desperately trying to encourage myself with the almost-5 sunset, and the shortness of February, and the possibility that there would be spring-like days early in March. But now, winter hasn’t even really started. I’ve made it to February without the usual trauma and battle scars. Feels strange.

How is winter going for you?

A Friday ritual.
A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama (through daily doings). If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

The lesson which life constantly repeats is to ‘look under your feet.’ You are always nearer to the divine
and the true sources of your power than you think.
The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive.
The great opportunity is where you are.
Do not despise your own place and hour.
Every place is under the stars.
Every place is the center of the world.

John Burroughs

A Friday ritual.
A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama (through daily doings). If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

If you’re looking for ways to make your Christmas gifts more meaningful this year (or just looking for some really great coffee), please consider buying this fairly-traded, sustainably-farmed coffee to help Jeremy and Elizabeth bring their babies home. As if that weren’t enough incentive, 5% of every sale of Just Love Coffee goes to support clean water projects in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya.

Here’s the link to their coffee sales page https://justlovecoffee.com/about/beneficiary/zzpetals/. You can also go to their blog, ZuZu’s Petals, to read more about their story and to see other ways to support their adoption.

A Friday ritual.
A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama (through daily doings). If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

The finding: There’s little correlation between a group’s collective intelligence and the IQs of its individual members. But if a group includes more women, its collective intelligence rises.

The more women in a group, the higher the group scored on their tasks –brainstorming, decision making, and visual puzzles, and solving one complex problem.

Another great quote from the article:

What do you hear about great groups? Not that the members are all really smart but that they listen to each other. They share criticism constructively. They have open minds. They’re not autocratic. And in our study we saw pretty clearly that groups that had smart people dominating the conversation were not very intelligent groups.

That last bit reminds me of 1 Corinthians 12. “But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.”