Hey Mrs. billybob:

How come no one ever wrote a song, When It's Springtime In New Jersy? For those who only know New Jersey through the Jersey Turnpike, that might sound ridiculous. But, New Jersey IS the Garden State, and it's aptly named. We have mockingbirds nesting in our shrubs again, along with Cardinal, Blue Jays and Robins. This is a beautiful time of year... probably my favorite.

I was thinking of Freda when she dropped by the other day, and while we're welcoming the Spring, it's Fall Down Under. That's always hard to remember. But then, one of my sons and his wife paid for Ruth and I to visit them in Florida in February, and we drove two hours through the worst ice storm I've seen in years to get to the airport in Hartford, here in Connecticut, and arrive in Fort Lauderdal with the temperature in the 70's. My greatest culture shock was in the 60's when I spent a summer on a floating iceberg in the Arctic Ocean, 800 miles NORTH of Alaska. At the end of the summer, when the runway was frozen enough for planes to land, I was picked up, brought back to Point Barrow, Alaska, and then flew back to New York City. I went from below freezing weather with 24 hours of sunlight on an iceberg to the subways of New York City in early September. But, it was a memorable summer... not many people have stared a Polar Bear in the eye, in the wild with nothing around you but ice.

Jerry