To the west is a sharp, horizontal dividing line of cloud. Below the line it's clear, above the line it's cloudy--the usual manifestation of a chinook. After, for weeks, temperatures often well below freezing, relief. The forecast for the coming week is for highs between 5C (41F) and 7C (45F).

Blissful. Yet we have so much snow and/or the angle of the sun is such that the layers of white stuff seem to shrink only slightly each day. But that is a good thing. Winter without snow can be ugly.

Book report: Been plodding through a thick biography of JFK which had grabbed me at the start with a recounting of his heroics as a WWII PT boat commander. His upbringing also was interesting, as was his run-up to becoming president. But now I'm bogged down in what Kennedy achieved as president after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and prior to his death. The author, a professional historian, is dutifully and pedantically covering pieces of legislation and what have you and I find myself bored. Think I'll abandon ship.

A chief reason is that I now have in my possession (also from the library) a far more superior biography: David McCullough's book on the revolutionary who later became the second U.S. president: John Adams. I started in on the first few pages, and decided. "Ah yes, no doubt, this will be a book to be savored."

Sample: "As befitting a studious lawyer from Braintree, Adams was a 'plain dressing' man. His oft-stated pleasures were his family, his farm, his books and writing table, a convivial pipe and cup of good coffee (now that tea was no longer acceptable), or preferably a glass of good Madeira." A little later it states Adams was "both a devout Christian and an independent thinker, and he saw no contradiction in that."

So good-bye, for now, JFK, and hello, J. Adams. After all, I read, for the most part to be entertained, to be distracted from (as Bunyan put it when he decided to write in prison) "worse thoughts."

Now I must run...