The blue jay above feasted at the feeder, until he was rudely shunned away by the blue jay below, who had noticably brighter plumage.

That is the question we face in Iraq. I am glad I am not in a position to decide.

My first impulse would be: Let's pour in troops, settle things down, get rid of the bad guys and try to get the country back on its feet.

That is simply not possible without reinstituting the draft, a political impossibility right now. We only have about 20,000 troops to send in. In a country of 26 million, I somehow doubt that will tilt the scales.

Woke up to this today. A lot of snow fell last evening. It is puffy and powdery. If the wind comes up, it will blow around.

Last night, I attended a dinner for the board of the Northwest Minnesota Foundation in Bagley. The roads over weren't bad, but on the way home, it was downright nasty.

Spent the afternoon in a reel of microfilm of the Norman County Index from 1951 and 1952 at the Ada Library.

Saw that my grandfather ran ads for the nursery all summer. "We are happy to have visitors at any time, but we do not care to work Sundays."

Also, I saw that Grandpa was on the board of an organization called the Norman County Temperance Association. They had a speaker whose thesis was that if your neighbor doesn't know how to use his freedom properly, freedom for him is a curse. You should stop him as a service to himself and the larger community.