from the Jill Schwartz

from the Jill Schwartz Memorial Library in the wild of Connecticut

this is obscure the podcast in which I read Jude the obscure out loud and comment

on it as I go. Now, Winter has blown in to the wilds of Connecticut. The first snowfall has come and

Everything around me is blanketed in that gorgeous white that we associate with the new season and with the hibernation that all things must undertake in order to get through to the new season.

The new season after the new season, the next new season, whatever comes after winter,

I don't know what it is, but I do know what winter means for me.

Toastitos in lots of them.

I sit on the throne here in the reading room my shitty little

rat dog jackjack curled up beside me really more behind me today.

He's sequestered just beyond my left buttock where I imagine I am giving him some measure of warmth because he is a shitty little

rat dog he has very little protective fur nothing protects him from the elements other than the kindness of strangers.

And so he is curled up just under my left buttock.

And I have my Afghan tossed over my shoulder so he is underneath that I imagine it is a

comfortable little cocoon from which to contemplate life and nobody has done

more contemplation of life than our friend Jude Fowley, who when last we met him was trudging back to Mary Green, his own doggy tail between his legs.

After a night of drunken carousing, followed by an embarrassing episode at his cousin Sue Bridehead's home.

Jude has decided that he has no place in Christminster.

He has no place in higher education. He may have no place in this life.

So he leaves his little apartment.

He starts walking the 20 miles back to Mary Green, still a little

drunk, and it says he had ample time to complete on the way the sobering process begun in him.

...