Belmont Club has a terrific piece here about the Sudan, Churchill, the Four Feathers, and Islam.

I started reading a book Dad had found about the long siege of Leningrad. Excellent so far. Does a good job of setting the scene, how there were plenty of rumors of war, but on the day the Germans invaded, Russians were still going about their normal life, going to the theater, or for walks in the park, etc... They had no idea of the horror that was to descend on their country. (Of course, Stalin brought his own horrors.)

The book mentions some familiar places in Moscow, such as the Alexander Gardens, just outside the Kremlin wall. We walked through there a number of times. Also, it describes officials entering the Kremlin through the Borovitsky Gate, on the SW corner of the Kremlin. That's the Gate we went through when we went into the Kremlin for our tour.

I built a snow fort in the front yard last night. Rhonda had started on, had a low mound of snow, so I got a 5-gallon bucket and built it up. I also cut open a large cardboard box and put it around one side as a kind of wall. Of course, temps are going to be near 45 for the next couple days, so we'll see how much it melts.

Rhonda took Hanna with to Kohls last night. Apparently she was chatting up other shoppers there. John and I played with Lincoln Logs after going inside, building a couple of forts. Or, as John called them, a house of sticks, which he, as the Big Bad Wolf, enjoyed blowing down.