Two days before any holiday I finally get in the mood for the revelry. Problem is, it takes longer than that to thaw a turkey.

In 2008, money and jobs dried up in Union County as the hard time known forever as the Great Recession began. In the spring of that year, Fleetwood Enterprises closed its recreational vehicle plant near Island City.  A few months later Boise Cascade curtailed a shift at its La Grande sawmill and laid off 30 workers at the particleboard plant near Island City.  Barreto Manufacturing, maker of rototillers and trenchers, went to a one-day-a-week work schedule that fall.

The problem is two-fold. First, children are more sedentary than they used to be in the good old days when we walked to school nine miles, in snow up to our armpits, uphill both ways. 

There’s nothing like a fire in the woodstove to turn back the calendar. In a few hours Monday, I turned my living room from November to July. Thunderheads began building up above the reading lamp.