Perhaps a little early this winter to pull out the Henry Miller quote

But it has been dern cold here. So, from Tropic of Capricorn, originally posted here in January, brought back by my own demand:

The earliest remembrance I have is of the cold, the snow and ice in the gutter, the frost on the window panes, the chill of the sweaty green walls in the kitchen. Why do people live in the temperate zones, as they are miscalled? Because people are naturally idiots, naturally sluggards, naturally cowards. Until I was about ten years old I never realized that there were "warm" countries, places where you didn't have to sweat for a living, nor shiver and pretend that is was tonic and exhilarating. Wherever there is cold there are people who work themselves to the bone and when they produce young they preach
to the young the gospel of work--which is nothing, at bottom, but the doctrine of inertia. My people were Nordic, which is to say idiots.