I sometimes call Maria my Willa Cather girl, she is a wondrous mix of energy, emotion, creativity, nature, animals and love. She has a fierce spirit. Someone messaged me and said Maria was the perfect partner for me, and this is very true.

Yesterday in the howling winds and rain (it was 60 degrees, today it is -4) she went out to the barn to shovel the manure out to the pile, and the wind was practically bending her over, she was happy, in her element, busy, engaged, out in nature, caring for animals, keeping me from sliding on the mud and snow.

She is an artist through and through, yet a farm person, what we used to call a farm wife. She almost melds into the chores, some of them muddy and hard, and then two hours later, will be obsessed making her new quilt, this time called “Being Warm” now on sale, a fitting title for a quilt in this season of brutal cold.

This life is her life, it is natural for her, it combines her fierce creativity with her other passions – nature, animals, me hopefully. I love to photograph her, not only because I love her, but because she seems so much in her element here, even shoveling manure, she puts her own style and stamp on everything she does.

Today, we shift gears again, heading for a Shithole Festival of refugees and immigrants, I am excited to be meeting some of the RISSE parents, and I am told they are excited to meet me, a strange figure to them, I imagine.

Ali called this morning to say the soccer team found a place to practice indoors Monday, Martin Luther King day, but they will charge $10 per player. We’ll figure it out I told him. Ali hates to ask for money, he is afraid I will get sick of it and walk away.

I will never walk away, he will figure that out one day. Maria is coming too, it is a Koran Festival, held at an Albany School. I’m bringing a check fo Maulidi the carver, clothes for Sifa and her children, snow boots for some of the RISSE kids, sweaters, shirts and toys for anybody who wants  or needs them. And of course, money for the indoor practice.

The soccer team is so important, a group of loving outcasts come together to learn how to live in America together. They must succeed.

See you later.