About 2 or 3 inches of snow – alternate sunlight and clouds, a brisk wind from the s.w. a delightful early winter day.
Morning strangely quiet and the landscape is a soft grey. Already nature has sensed the coming of the storm and crouches motionless.
There is a cold quietness; light comes mainly from the ground – the trees, so harshly outlined in mornings bitter cold light are now softened – at midafternoon, snow commences to fall
As the day advanced, the clouds broke and we had a rare combination of sunlight and snow-flurries at noon as the snow-particles fell on our coats, we saw that they were wonderful little stars.
All at once it came over me how much I loved today – all the dour qualities of the sky and earth, the raw wet wind driving a fine mist thru the air
The sun a pale white glow in a misty, ever changing sky - Everything seemed full of goodness & interest again...
12:30 – Broadcast of Roosevelt’s call for war declaration on Japan –
P.M. Philharmonic concert – In the intermission, news of Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (Hawaii). The Philippines, Hong Kong, etc. – impossible to take in its significance at once. –
From mid-January until the time of my departure for the Armed Services, my main interest was Humanity, not Nature. It was a bitter winter. I tried to show the hardness of human lives and the struggles, which led naturally into making “portraits” of individual houses, designed to show just what sort of people lived in them.
Last night in the clear afterglow the houses had a strange, evil look — a foreboding of something about to happen — This morning a blizzard from S.E. — The snow is a wild craving monster pawing down from the sky