I am making progress at work - slow, but sure. Since we've had snow here, I'm thinking of a snow metaphor (although it is envisioned in my mind as a mountain snow situation.) Here we go: This job is like walking through the woods in deep snow - sometimes the snow has a crust on it and it bears your weight, sometimes you plunge down through what you thought was solid snow, and you're knee or thigh deep in the snow and the next two or three steps break through the snow, and you're really struggling; then you're back on top of it again; once in a while, there's a place under a rock or a pine tree with bear berry underfoot and no snow and you can rest.

The great progress is that in the last month or so, I've signed up two clients I've been working with between 3 and 4 months. This is a long, slow process, certainly not automatic or easy. We're off to a new client on Sunday evening for meetings Monday and Tuesday - it will be an intense two days. I hope to emerge from this whole process with a custodial arrangement - that is, we'll produce and manage their newspaper. Trust. Built trust. We are worthy of people's trust because what we do is successful, but someone will not automatically understand this.

The place where we are going is basically begging us to save their newspaper. There's the first step - to realize there's a problem. I have great hope for this diocese and their newspaper.

Is it concrete or snow?
OK, after months of enjoying the easiest winter I can ever remember, we had concrete fall from the sky on Wednesday. I mean it, this stuff is bad. It was sort of a mix between sleet and snow and ice and it came down in little pellets that immediately hardened up. Of course, there appears to be almost no snow plows in the region, so on Wednesday, I joined about 5 other hearty souls and drove in to work, slogging through about 5 inches of this concrete stuff. Thursday morning, when I had to be at a director's retreat, my car was initially STUCK to the driveway. We have a rather steep driveway and I have this huge car, and it was glued to the driveway! Frank managed to break it free and blast through the frozen concrete at the bottom of the driveway. On Wednesday, he and Paul chipped through the stuff to dig out the sidewalk, but didn't have the strength to shovel the driveway. Who knows how long it will be before it is warm enough to chip through concrete?

A fading legacy
Our retreat was at the Oblate Sisters of Divine Providence's world headquarters (probably less impressive than it sounds) which is on a beautifully wooded parcel near our house. They have an 1930's era stout, but imposing, three-story structure with two wings built around a courtyard. It looks to me like they run a nursing home, but it might just be because so many of the women religious are elderly. Many orders are turning their facilities into nursing homes while they have no new women entering and dwindle away.

What is most interesting about this order is that they are the first (only?) religious order founded for black women. And, they were founded before the Civil War - I'm thinking it was in the 1840s, by an educated woman from Cuba who landed here and discovered the plight of the black folks. She started educating the children - she lived for a time with the first American-born canonized saint - Mother Seton - in the house on Paca Street, where Mother Seton was educating young girls. It is so amazing to think how people overcame obstacles that we can't even imagine. When Mother Seton relocated to Emmitsburg, she walked the entire way - a three day trip that now takes about an hour-and-a-half.