Snowed in and bogged down in Olympia

It’s been “snow week” here at the Capitol. There was a good dusting in the Olympia area a week ago when I returned from a hunt with a dear friend and former fellow legislator on the Olympic Peninsula (no ducks, but two geese in the bag). On Wednesday, a foot or so of additional snow fell – a record for that particular day and about as much as Olympia ever sees at once – and Thursday brought an ice storm and widespread power outages.

The place where I live south of Olympia was among the many that lost power, which not only meant no heat, but also no pump for the well. Fortunately, I was able to...