Frozen rivers and meditating hobos

It's getting a little warmer, so I wanted to share a few pictures before the polar vortex heads North and everything melts.

Ice has formed on the insides of the windows in our apartment, and different rooms have generated different ice formations.

The ice is nothing, however, compared to a tale that a fellow dog walker told me today about his father-in-law's house in Wisconsin. He lives in a hemicycle house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright with floor-to-ceiling glass windows and underfloor heating. On very cold days, the ice on the inside of the windows can be up to 4 inches thick!

Cambridge looks beautiful in the cold. The River Charles has frozen: milky white ice reflecting a low winter sun. It's a shame in a way that there aren't more tourists here to witness this transformation of the Harvard buildings: the few people who are outside are hurrying towards their destinations, wrapped in layers of hats and scarves.

Every generalization, of course, has an exception. I met a boy called Ezekiel today. He's dreadlocked. A traveller. He told me about how he's been Kerouac-ing across the States, finding rides on freight trains and hitch-hiking. He pays his way through selling hand-written books of his poetry.

Ezekiel - 'call me Zeke' - sat down on the kerb to dig a book of poems he had written from his bag and, almost instantly, a police car pulled up and a cop wound down his window to ask Ezekiel if he was ok. Having been assured that there was no problem, the cop drove away.
'Do you get much trouble from the police?' I asked.
'Man, it's like you wouldn't believe some days. Like yesterday...' Ezekiel paused and coughed. 'I was having a great time. The sky was so beautiful, man! I was on my back on the Common - meditating and everything - and the next thing, there were cops and an ambulance and all that shit.'
'Were you ill?' I asked.
'I don't remember anything about it,' he grinned, standing up with his poetry book in his hand.
He read me a couple of poems, swaying slightly from the effort of staying upright. His poems were good. I bought myself a copy and recommended he sold some of his work to Spare Change News, the homeless newspaper. As we said goodbye, I thought about advising him to keep warm, but realized how useless such advice would be.
'Go to California,' I said. 'The skies are meant to be even more beautiful out there.'
He grinned, shook the dreadlocks out of his face, and raised a hand in farewell.