Winter in the South.....

.......can sometimes bring days of such stark beauty that you just want to sit in the sun and absorb as much as you can of the crystal blue sky above the bare reaching limbs of the one hundred year old white oak in the back yard.

Today was one of those.

While it started out with a little bit of a nip....enough to want an extra knit shirt on for warmth.....it soon warmed up to where that came off and you started rolling up the shirt sleeves a cuff or two.

Gracie Mae the Dalmatian with one blue eye and one brown eye came gallumping out of her straw filled barrel as soon as I set foot to the back deck. No lolly-gagging about with her snout tucked under her hind leg against the chill this morning....she was ready to greet me and the day....happy to sit by my side as we both soaked up the 60 degree warmth on the south porch of the tool shed. While she's a needy dog, constantly wanting to push her head under the hand resting on my thigh, she is wise enough to know when to turn and wander off on her own when my questioning of how she's doin' begins to wander off into musing about the general sorry state of things in the world today.

E-mails have been sent to both the Birmingham News and the Birmingham Public Library seeking information on the Trophy Cup from 1922. I guess we'll just have to wait a few days to see if anyone finds it of enough interest to bother either contacting me or looking up any long dormant information.

I determined I'd need a bigger buffing wheel and a long extension for the cordless drill to reach down into the narrow recess of the cup in my first attempts to remove the grime and tarnish inside the cup. While I almost hate to use the tripoli, it's slightly greater abrasiveness will be necessary to cut through the gunk, then changing the wheel and applying rouge will hopefully restore the satiny silver shine to the inside.

Silver is like a beautiful woman......warm and smooth....but requiring constant care and attention to prevent the subtle encroachments of time from dulling the outer surface. Of course with time a wonderful patina is obtained and she is appreciated for her true worth and not just the shiny outer surfaces. You just have to decide which is of more worth.

It may be like that with the blessing of liberty passed down to us from the Founding Fathers.
We begin to see that it's necessary to get out the cleaning cloth now and again to remove the corruption that we've allowed to build up.

If only it were as simple as applying some polish and elbow grease.