Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Weather +Climate, Writing

Inspiration in Winter/Spring

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Spring                                                                         Planting Moon

Hmm.  Snow yesterday coated the driveway and the walk.  Then melted.  Last night, snow again, covering the driveway and the walk.  Again.  Still there at 11 am this morning.  Yowzer.

A Star-Tribune editorial cartoon yesterday compared April 2012 and April 2013 with sounds. April 2012 was chirp, chirp.  April 2013 was chip, chip.  Apt.  And funny.  Sort of.

I wrote confidently here about my new ability in Latin translation.  Well, I should have known that was actually the signpost to a new plateau.  A rough day yesterday with Greg.  A lot wrong.  Something of it was just hard, a corrupt line or two of manuscript, other parts it seems I had sleepwalked through.

(Wheel of Time map)

In spite of that set back I’m still going forward to Book I to begin a full translation and to take notes for a commentary.  I’ll just have to go slower and work harder.  The time exists as does the will.

This morning I finished the first book, The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan, in the Wheel of Time series, twelve books long and unfinished at Jordan’s death at age 58.  It’s an impressive achievement.  It’s reach is broad and his intention runs deep.  I’m not sure about the depth, but I am sure that the world he has imagined and the narrative threads he has uncovered within it are wonderful.

It will serve as an inspiration during the revision of Missing, number three, and for the rest of the novels in the Tailte mythos.

Weather +Climate, Writing

Hawking Books

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Spring                                                                       Bloodroot Moon

56 today.  At this rate we might see the bloodroot bloom under this moon.

Class today from Scott Edelstein on marketing and selling books.  Very good.  Lots of good information.  Publishing had gone and is undergoing major changes.  Made me feel hopeful, always a good thing.

Weather +Climate

Winter on the First Day of Spring

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Imbolc                                                         Bloodroot Moon

It has come to that brittle point in any winter, the time when it seems to stretch on and on and on.  Snow tonight, perhaps 2-4 inches.  Then drops to single digit lows for three days in a row.  The high for the first day of spring 18.  The low 4. Outsiders to the north cannot understand, but this makes us happy.  Last year on this date the temperature was 80.  80.

There was no yearning for the end of winter.  No, a fear that winter might be gone pervaded our region.  Had we become a northern latitude Indianapolis?  What did we do in our gardens in March?  Most Marches we still have snow on the ground like we do now.

Yes, as we age those slick sidewalks give us pause.  But what gives us more pause is the northward march of what we’ve always considered southern temperatures.  In March.  We’re used to hot.  We get up in the 100’s from time to time, more recently.  We put up with it the way southern folk endure a spell of 50 or 60 degree weather.  Unhappily.

Cabin fever, that claustrophobic I’ve been in the house way too long feeling, that hits us now?  That’s the brittle point I referred to in the first paragraph.  We all know it at one level or another.  Well this northerner, and I’m sure I’m not alone, would not trade cabin fever for fevered temperatures in March.  It just doesn’t feel right.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Memories, Poetry, Weather +Climate

Yet.

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Imbolc                                                                   Bloodroot Moon

Snow came in the night.  Maybe 2 inches.  Freshened up the landscape, pushed back the melting time.  Last year today it was 73, ruining my vision of the north, turning it into a slushy Indiana/Ohio/Illinois.  Climate change stealing my home.  It disoriented me, made me feel like a stranger in a strange, yet strangely familiar, land.  Now.  30 degrees.  8 inches of snow.  Home again.

A book on my shelf, important to me:  Becoming Native to This Place.  The idea so powerful.  One so necessary for this nature starved moment, as the pace of the city as refuge lopes toward its own four minute mile.  Cities are energy, buzz, imagination criss-crossing, humans indulging, amplifying, renewing humanness but.  But.

All good.  Yes.  Yet.

That stream you used to walk along.  The meadow where the deer stood.  You remember.  The night the snow came down and you put on your snowshoes and you walked out the backdoor into the woods and walked quietly among the trees, listening to the great horned owl and the wind.  The great dog bounding behind you in the snow, standing on your snowshoes, making you fall over and laugh.  Remember that?

There was, too, that New Year’s Day.  Early morning with the temperature in the 20s below zero and another dog, the feral one, black and sleek, slung low to the ground, went with you on the frozen lake, investigating the ice-fishing shacks, all alone, everyone still in bed from the party the night before but you two walked, just you two and the cold.

Before I go, I also have to mention those potatoes.  The first year.  Reaching underneath the earth, scrabbling around with gloved fingers.  Finding a lump.  There.  Another.  And another.  And another.  The taste.  Straight from the soil.  With leeks and garlic.  Tomatoes, too, and beets.  Red fingers.  The collard greens.  Biscuits spread with honey from the hive.

Great Wheel, Weather +Climate

Seasonal Fulcrum

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Imbolc                                                                      Valentine Moon

Brilliant.  New snow, a sun climbing the heavens, reaching for summer.  That hope for release from a long winter.  A space shuttle ride to the green of spring after 5 months of death and decay.  Yes, I love winter.  I love the snow, the cold, the sense of enclosure, the lengthening nights.  And, yes, I love spring.  Bloodroot, daffodils, new leaves of green.  Birds and dogs and kids and all the blooming buzzing confusion. (yes, william james)

This point, right now, is like the fulcrum of a seasonal teeter-totter as the cold of winter still sits dense and heavy on its end, holding spring up high, faraway from the ground.  Spring, unlike other strategies in such a situation (you know, piling on more kids or calling for mom and dad), simply smiles on winter until winter lets up, first balancing the long board, then letting spring’s end come all the way down to the ground.

There is an energy that pours itself into the bones as these seasonal changes come, as if the body wants to merge with the onrushing transformation.  Bones feel lighter now.  Smiles come a bit more often. Toes want to be stood upon. Shoulders no longer cry for more sweater, more coat, more scarf.  Instead they want to be open and warmed.

No.  It’s not yet.  Not yet.  But I can see winter’s resolve beginning to melt and spring’s end of the teeter-totter slowing beginning to inch its way up.

Poetry, Weather +Climate

When the Student is Cold, Winter is the Teacher

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Imbolc                                                      Valentine Moon

“When the eyes and ears are open,
even the leaves on the trees teach like
pages from the scriptures.”
Kabir

What then can the winter teach us, when the leaves have fallen and the plants are quiet?  Our gardens fall away, buried by white snow, their shapes changed, smoothed, flowing.  No evidence of their fertility, or, rather, the only evidence is of its end, brown stems above the snow.  A lesson that the same place can be two things.  Green and white.  Fruitful and barren.  Hot and cold.

On very cold days the air has a clarity, a snap to its presence.  It insists on your attention and your care.

The cold and the snow preach purity, the willing of one thing.  Change by lowering the temperature.  Think of the things in the world that could be made better by lowering their temperature.  Winter is witness to the power of such change, its possibility and its possibilities.

Blue sky, clear air, snow shaping the earth and wind driven snow.  Then, low clouds, gray skies, snow falling fast and faster, the onrush of blizzard.  The humbling of the machine.  The reconstructive surgeon of the landscape.  We do not own this place; we’re visitors.  It comes with its own reality, one in which we exist by sufferance.

Winter teaches us humility.

Our Land and Home, Travel, Weather +Climate

Take A Hike

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Imbolc                                                                     New (Valentine) Moon

Business meeting.  Money matters go well.  Calendar looks good.  I’ve had to pull back my Isle of Skye trip to the US, too much money going out unexpectedly:  furnace, Gertie.  I did find a great alternative though, lodge to lodge hiking on the Superior Trail.  I can do the same length of trip, beautiful hikes with views of Lake Superior, and spend about half the money.

Kate and I have been fixing the front door on the plate today.  I took the pins out of the hinges, levered the door off and we could finally remove the lock from the door.  Kate’s putting a new door knob and lock into the door right now, then I’ll go back up and rehang the door.  He said confidently.  This door’s solid core with a metal front.  Translation:  heavy.  It ain’t heavy, it’s my front door.  Yeah, right.

More Eddas and Latin today as the snow falls.

(winter storm northeast 2013)

A wet snow began to fall this morning and forecasts have it continuing into Monday.  Maybe 4-6 inches.  Not near as much as the poor Northeast.  Getting this monster snow storm after Hurricane Sandy.  Not a good thing.

Weather +Climate

The Devil’s Weather

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Imbolc                                                                      Cold Moon

It is these middling days, when the sun shines and water melts off the roof, these days when the natural order seems poised for a sudden change, that make me want to hide deep in a bunker coming out only for true deep winter, May and the crisp days of fall whenever they might come.  A weather purist me.  I want a fall with blues that make you want to disappear into the sky, chill winds, golden leaves.  I want winters with crunchy snow, temperatures that curl your hair and winds that howl all night.  I like, too, those brief moments when the earth discovers growth again, when plants, leaves and flowers ascramble with color, fling themselves out of the ground, eager for food and light.  The rest, those dreary drippy days of mud and slush can go to the devil, whom I’m sure invented such weather as a metaphor for our usual approach to values.  Give me weather with a knife edge or the shocking beauty of a pre-Raphaelite painter.  That’s what would get me out of my bunker.  For the rest, bah.

GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

Furnace Trouble

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Winter                                                                   Cold Moon

Of course, the only time you’re going to learn that your furnace has problems is in the winter.  So in that sense it’s no surprise that I’m sitting up waiting on some repair technician who has to work late on Sunday night, Super Bowl Sunday night.

(what our furnace is not doing)

Our home has good insulation and we keep it cool to begin with, so we’re not suffering in any way; but, it wouldn’t be good for this to go on for a long while.  It’s 10 degrees out now. At least it’s not last week when we were looking at -15.

You can just hear the Lakota and the Ojibwe, the pioneers and other early settlers chortle at any discomfort we have in homes of solid construction, with insulation of R-50 or better, central heating and cooling, indoor plumbing.  Can you imagine living in a log cabin or a sod hut when the temperature hits 30 below or more?  I can’t.

The really good news for us is that we have a reliable company that we’ve used for many years.  Centerpoint energy dispatched a person when I called around 7 pm.  Heat out is an emergency call here, but there are always multiple furnaces out.  So, you get in line.  Right now I’m supposed to hear before midnight.  Maybe.  It depends on how long it took to solve the person’s problem before us.  And you want them to solve the problem.

So. You wait and are happy to have someone to wait for.

GeekWorld, Latin, Weather +Climate

Off the Plateau

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Winter                                                             Cold Moon

Bitter this morning.  -15.  Headed toward a high of 2.  Which we might reach and we might not.

Awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night.  It happens.  Not often.  This morning I kept turning over ideas for rewriting Missing, rewriting ideas spurred by my beta readers. I’m not ready to get started on that because I’ve got other readers yet to report in, but already the feedback has been very helpful.  Their thoughtfulness will make for a stronger book.

This is a Latin day, a time with Greg.  I felt better translating this last chunk of Jason and Medea and the time with Greg confirmed that my skill level has begun to increase again.  I hit plateaus where I seem to slog along, not doing well, not doing poorly, then bump up to a different, higher capacity.  This was one of those days.  Feels good.

This afternoon I plan to reorganize my images.  I’m on a two-week layoff from working out due to knee pain, most likely patella-femoral syndrome.  Best treatment?  Rest.  So, I’m resting.  I don’t like it; I’m very attached to regular workouts, but the long term is more important than the short term.