It is Saturday morning, and Washington DC has not had a really serious snow for several years (my sole reference is my memory). But now it looks like we may be in for it. Why we aren’t skipping town while we have a chance, I don’t know.

The forecast is for about 24 hours of snow beginning some time Sunday night, continuing throughout Monday. We are in a band of a predicted four to eight inches. That may be bad enough, but the temperatures are not expected to exceed freezing (either Fahrenheit or Centigrade or even Celsius – I checked all three, as you might expect) for the next ten days, at least. So, the snow looks like it will stick around. I bought a new long handled car scraper (our former garage is now a room), and twenty five pounds of something to put on our front sidewalk and driveway.

But our general informal house rule is not to venture out unless we have to if there is danger of ice or slippage. As to shoveling, although our two children volunteer, we normally either do it ourselves if it is easy and flaky (which this probably will not be) or someone will knock on the door and make as an offer that we probably should, but probably will not refuse, to shovel the walk and driveway and shovel out the cars. I know this is a minor problem, as problems go, but when you get to be a certain age, you can’t be too careful, can you?

At any rate, right now the weather is coldish out (30 F), but sunny and clear, and it should stay that way over the weekend.

Changing the subject: you know who Henry Morgenthau, Sr. was? Not Henry Morgenthau, Jr. who became Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury, but his father, a German Jewish refugee who became a lawyer and real estate entrepreneur in New York City and made a fortune? Born in 1856, he was 10 when his family immigrated to the U.S. and he lived for more than 90 years, dying in 1946. He was Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I, from 1913 to 1916. Interestingly, of the three preceding American Ambassadors to the Ottomans, two were Jewish (Oscar Straus and Solomon Hirsch), the idea being somehow that a Jewish ambassador could best work with the Muslim Turks. As Ambassador during the war years, he was one of the first to call out the mass murdering of Armenians and Greeks by Turkish forces, calling it one of the worst crimes in all of history.

He wrote his memoirs, a book called All in a Lifetime, published by Doubleday in 1922, after his time as an American diplomat. The book is very difficult to find, and I happened upon a copy several years ago. Not only a copy, but one inscribed by Morgenthau, referencing his trip to Palestine when he was Ambassador in Istanbul. The book is inscribed to John D. Whiting, who was an American photographer living in Jerusalem in what was then known as the American Colony. (See the photographs at the end of this post.)

Henry Morganthau, by the way, was the father of Henry, Jr., who became Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury (Morgenthau, Sr. was appointed Ambassador by Woodrow Wilson), and who was active in Jewish affairs during and after World War II. He was a very interesting man, as well, and worth looking into. Other Morganthaus, Henry Sr.’s grandchildren, including long time (35 year) Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and writer and historian, Barbara Tuchman.

Why am I telling you this? Not only because it is all interesting, but because I just sold the book to a prominent London book store, “Peter Harrington”, which you may know. I brought the book to be shipped this morning from our local post office. Because the book was fairly pricey, I wanted to make sure that it was properly insured before it left on its international journey.

Now, I will say that we have been shipping books out for almost 15 years and have shipped over 3,000 here and there. And only once has there been a loss or damage problem, and that was last year, another valuable book, and also a book which we shipped to the U.K. That book was titled The Secret State and it was double signed and inscribed, in Polish and English, by Jan Karski, a Polish-American who had gone back to Poland and, dressed as a Nazi soldier, entered Auschwitz, learning it was death camp before than was widely known, and who reported that back to the American authorities and was basically ignored.

When we shipped the Karski book, I insured it for a few hundred dollars and the book was badly damaged en route. The U.K. authorities said that it was damaged when it was turned over to them by the U.S. Postal Service. I was told that I was going to have a hard time collecting on the policy, but when I presented the material the buyer and I were able to put together, without a delay the Postal Service sent me a check for $200, the proceeds of which I gave to the buyer to cover some of his loss.

Today, when I went to mail Morgenthau to London, I was told that insurance was not available on the parcel. That, if I wanted to send it, it had to go as it was, without insurance. The clerk, with whom I deal with fairly regularly, showed me his computer screen which said that insurance was not available.

What to do……I think in normal times, I would have held onto the book and researched further, but because of the coming snow (aha, you say, here is the connection between Morgenthau and a snow storm), I was afraid I was not going to be able to get to the post office early last week and I didn’t want to delay it. So, out it went.

Hopefully, I will get a nice note (“it got here safe and sound”) from Peter Harrington in a week or so. If not, a big loss (book and money) to start 2025.

By the way, in case you are concerned, the buyer knows the condition. He also knows how to restore it .