From the Desk of Sarah Teasdale

The temperature here right now is hovering at 20 degrees. Our high for today was around 3o. The low for tonight may be as low as 5 degrees by some reports. Tomorrow the temperature is not supposed to get out of the teens all day.

Listen to the radio at work this afternoon, I heard the rather vapid little afternoon deejay lament the bitter cold. My temper spiked a bit. Now to be honest, I usually find the radio station piped through the store a bit irritating but her whining today actually had me grinding my teeth. I could not help thinking that much like me and many others when she finished her day she would be going home to a warm house and a hot meal. When the temperature drops to the single digits tonight she will be in her warm comfortable bed with her furnace roaring.

Unfortunately, not everyone will be so lucky. Thinking of those who will suffer through this night with no roof and no warm bed I could not help thinking that by comparison the little airhead on the radio had very little reason to complain.

I took a moment to be thankful I would be one of the lucky ones. As I did an old poem by Sarah Teasdale came to mind. As she said it much better than I could, I will let her express my thoughts for those suffering the cold with little or no shelter:

Ms. Betty

Heart of Fire

As requested by a commenter, I've dug up a picture of the heart of fire and it's two sister implements that I made from the same plastic jump rope.

I post this with the standard disclaimer about the lousy pictures I take:

Some of you who remember me from my 360 days may recall that when I started visiting pc at his office I had to tackle the challenge of finding quiet implements I could use there. The "ladies" as I call them were born of that need.

I'd bought the jump rope nearly a year before, thinking I'd find some fun thing to make from it but never getting around to it. Then about the time I was trying to come up with silent implements I saw a toy made from the same type of knot on an adult store website. Reluctant to buy such a thing sight unseen I decided to make my own instead, so I got out the jump rope and viola... The knot is a carrick knot, sometimes called a Josephine. As such I named the two implements Lady Josephine (the one in the middle) and her big sister, Lady Catherine (with the blue handle.)

After finishing them I had a short length of the jump rope left over. It wasn't quite long enough for another knot, but too long for a single loop. (Too much wrapping.) Since I thought the first two looked a bit like carpet beaters I took my inspiration there and modeled the third implement on the heart shaped carpet beaters I had sometimes seen. I did not name it, though, until the first time I applied it to pc's poor bottom and discovered the curious welts it left behind.

Ms. Betty