So many happy memories of Wash times. Discussions on weather, discussions on tornado-chasing, discussions on humming-bird forays. Sometimes this Emily Dickenson poem helps me, though I am not entirely sure what it means; Hope is the thing with feathers. Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all. And sweetest in the gale is heard, And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea, Yet never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.