Winter is the time to fight the gray days with indoor activities! Sure, there are the occasional days when the sun comes out, the wind dies down, and BJ heads to Kehele Park to play pickleball with visiting grandsons. There are even some not-as-attractive days when she goes to play pickleball with friends at The Beach Club.

However, most of the time, we join you at Dine and Discover, The Beach Club potluck, Port Ludlow Performing Arts performances, movies in Port Townsend or Poulsbo or even The Bay Club, reading books and/or wine labels for “book clubs,” Yacht Club festivities at the Wreck Room, watching college basketball on TV and at regular meetings of one sort or another. There is also the occasional Rotary Club meeting or poker game, never at the same time and never outside,

The good folks at The Bay Club presented the iconic film “Blazing Saddles” last week, and the annual Beach Club potluck dinner and bingo game was last weekend. But there is a lot more right around the corner.

Aaron Wirsing, Ph.D., associate professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington, is to be the speaker at the Feb. 5 Dine and Discover. He is set to discuss wolves and how they shape their ecosystem. Wolves are a very controversial issue in many rural ranching parts of the western U.S.

We have been regular patrons of the Port Ludlow Performing Arts and are looking forward to its “Intersection” presentation on Saturday, Feb. 17 at The Bay Club. The show offers an “irresistible blend of classical, jazz, Latin, Broadway/film music and some of their own compositions and arrangements.” Over the holidays, we saw all three of The Rose Theatre’s offerings: “Star Wars,” “Darkest Hour” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”

Now we are trying to find time to see “The Post,” which will be especially interesting since we lived in the Washington, D.C., area in the early stages of those scandals of the early 1970s and The Washington Post was our local paper. (Yeah, I know, the key newspaper player in that story was really The New York Times.)

So, here we are in the middle of winter, and I urge you to take solace from this old Arabic proverb: “All sunshine, too much sunshine, simply makes a desert.”

Love a curmudgeon and have a great week.

Port Ludlow resident Ned Luce enjoys writing about his own back yard. Connect with him at nedluce@sbcglobal.net.