First fire

A seasonal milestone came and went this weekend. On Saturday evening, for the first time in months, I stoked up the wood stove in a big room that serves as a sometime dining room and general vegging space.

It was an "oh yeah" moment for me. For the last several months, I've thought of the woodpile as place of physical exertion whereat I do battle with recalcitrant fallen trees. It was nice to be reminded what all that exertion was for.

Although we don't cook with it or rely on it as the primary heat source for the house, there is nothing quite like a fireplace on a chilly evening. No wonder that the hearth was the center of the home in earlier centuries.

Hestia, Greek goddess of the hearth, was poor in mythology. You don't see her rampaging around the fields of Troy in the Iliad. But she held a place of honor in the daily life and devotions of the Greeks. For good reason.

WHO'D A THUNK IT? Scientists are using Twitter to study how moods rise and fall on a global basis.

MAYBE WE WERE RIGHT AFTER ALL. Back in 2009, there was a big struggle in the legislature to address the solvency of WV's unemployment insurance fund. Labor took the lead and I tried to get in a lick or two as well. Some business groups fought it tooth and nail. It now turns out the the fund weathered the recession well and that, unlike many states, WV hasn't had to borrow from the feds.

AMERICA'S FIRST BIG YOGI didn't do headstands.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED