Wear Your Red Flannels

"But when Monday came Laura was cross because her red flannel underwear was so hot and scratchy.

It made her back itch, and her neck, and her wrists, and where it was folded around her ankles, under her stockings and shoe-tops, that red flannel almost drove her crazy.

At noon she begged Ma to let her change to cooler
underthings. "It's too hot for my red flannels, Ma!" she protested.

"I know the weather's turned warm," Ma answered gently. "But this is the time of year to wear flannels, and you would catch cold if you took them off."

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Well, it seems like the Arctic has broken it's iron grip on the East coast, at least around Philadelphia. Yesterday we had a few inches of snow, today it rained this morning and now the sun is shining and it's above 40 degrees! "It's a veritable heat wave!" as I heard someone describe it yesterday.

However, this is the PERFECT time of year to learn the lessons of our elders. Do you know what happened to Laura that afternoon, when she was hot and scratchy in her flannels?

"Laura went crossly back to school and sat squirming because she must not scratch. She held the flat geography open before her, but she wasn't studying. She was trying to bear the itching flannels and wanting to get home where she could scratch. The sunshine from the western windows had never crawled so slowly.

Suddenly there was no sunshine. It went out, as if someone had blown out the sun like a lamp. The outdoors was gray, the windowpanes were gray, and at the same moment a wind crashed against the schoolhouse, rattling windows and doors and shaking the walls.
...
The blizzard was scouring against the walls, and the winds squealed and moaned in the stovepipe."

The forecast is still calling for single digits next week, and we've had significant snow in March (and April) before. Keep your flannels handy! Winter hasn't given up quite yet.