I am uncertain about making the bed this morning. Normally, it is an element of faith, that once out of the embrace of the eiderdown, it is the grown up thing to put it back in good order, sheets folded down on top, covers tight as a drum, and the pillows stacked just so.

I am fairly sure that I will be back in the disarray and safely horizontal, though. We will see what the rest of the morning brings.

The elements have our attention here. I am watching one of the Porters moving some snow on the ramp up from the basement garage. WTOP claims we can expect several more inches of snow over the course of the morning, and it is falling on pavement that started wet and then iced up in a sheet before the snow began. Pre-treatment with chemicals was ineffective because of the long period of rain.

The governments that collectively direct our conduct are closed, of course, OPM directing the shut-down late yesterday. I buzzed around doing some mundane chores- picking up a quilt that I commissioned to be made with a facing of commemorative t-shirt images from my running days- and fresh vegetables and eggs for the larder, since there is every possibility that this will freeze travel for a couple days, anyway.

The Harris Teeter supermarket was jammed, and people prowling the aisles looked grim and tired of winter.

I take that as the general mood of things here. I did not feel that in the Keys- there were all sorts of reasons to be vaguely happy all the time with the knowledge that that the sky would be blue as the water on the next day.

Not here, of course, this being the seventh or eighth snow event day that will complicate the lives of parents with children underfoot and those whose businesses (like Willow) will take a hit as an institution, and loss of wages and tips for the young people who work there.

There is some more troubling news on the morning electronic mullet wrappers. It appears that the Chinese are lining up with Mr. Putin to support the incursion into Ukraine; tanks are massing near Belgorod, between the not-so-ancient slaughterfields of Kursk and Kharkov.

For its part, Ukraine is mobilizing its toothless military. The plucky Baltic State are feeling a chill draft. The Japanese are looking warily at the Chinese about the uninhabited Senkaku Islands- or will they be called the Diaoyus, as the PRC desires?

I don’t know. It appears the best face that can be put on things is that the Cold War is back, and with the dramatic backdrop of the Sochi Olympics now complete, the re-establishment of Great Russia can proceed apace.

Which gets me back to the decision about the bed. I finally decided to make it, but I made a compromise, just in case an emergency recline calls.

I put the new quilt on top of the comforter, and looked at it closely for the first time. A have a pal in the wilds of Fairfax who I used to smoke with in between rings of the Pentagon after they banned the practice inside in the early 1990s, the time we thought we had beaten the Russians.

He is now retired and more irascible than before. His wife is Donna, a woman of formidable sewing skills. On a visit a couple months ago, before this awful winter began, I saw some of her handiwork: Quilts and wall-hangings of amazing complexity, created with tradititonal motifs and some of my pal’s old favorite commemorative t-shirts.

I had just reached a level in the sedimentary debris in the garage at Refuge Farm where a load of old clothing surfaced. The shirts I had saved down through the years were ones that commemorated specific events or places, and I honestly had no idea what to do with them. Seemed too significant to take to the Goodwill, but really.

Wearing a shirt announcing that you have completed the 1983 Honolulu Marathon is about on par in pretention as putting a decal on the back of your SUV that reads “26.2,” the distance in miles of the race. Pathetic.

Still, the hundreds of hours of training required to finish the race came back as I looked at the shirts, and I decided to ask Donna to do a quilt out of a representative sample. When I saw it yesterday I was knocked out by the detail, the memories and the craftsmanship.

See for yourself. If you have things you would like to preserve in a work of art, I can hook you up.

The other thing about the quilt is that I can slide under it without any need to unmake the bed, and be just as comfy as if I did. The quilt is a thing of wonder.

In the meantime, I am thinking about Ukraine and the implications for the fledgling democracies of East Europe. That appears to be a bed that has been unmade for quite some time, and there appears to be someone else getting in it altogether.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303