Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Aging, Art and Culture, Great Work, Politics, Weather +Climate

Good Tired

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Samhain                                                   Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Two days of interviews plus a tour day and all the attendant driving, 3 trips in and back, has left me with a good tired feeling.  Participating on a hiring committee puts me in the guts of an organization again.  I like that, even if it is only a volunteers part.  It’s true, though, that in my work with the Presbytery much of my work came in situations where I had an extra-organizational role in what was happening, so this is not so different from that.

My embarrassment of riches tour today went well.  Three folks came along and we spent our way wandering through the whole exhibit, talking and oohing and awing right along.  I like this smaller, adult tour where we can work it as a casual stroll, thinking together about the art, offering ideas as we go along.  I have two Thaw tours next week and I’m hoping for a better performance than with the Rochester Friends.

Another snow storm appears imminent, coming tomorrow night and Saturday.  Thankfully I don’t have a commitment outside in that time frame.  That way the driveway can get plowed, I can do the sidewalk and spread granite grit if necessary afterward.  I’ll be able to enjoy the snow this time.

One of these days, when life slows down a little bit, I need to get the chainsaw out and take out the cedar and the amur maples broken by the first heavy snowfall.

Cooking, Great Work, Health, permaculture, Politics, Weather +Climate

Working At It

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Samhain                                                Waning Thanksgiving Moon

All day today at the Sierra Club finishing up the first round of interviews for the new policy position.  A bit much for me in terms of people interaction, though very interesting in terms of the people I met.

Afterward, I had to eat dinner in the city because we ended at 4:3o, the gut of rush hour.  I knew I needed a good hour and a half, so I chose the Red Stag, a full sit-down meal with dessert.  The Red Stag serves local beef, lamb, vegetables and I imagine, fish, though I don’t know that for sure.  The food is excellent.  I had the grilled lamb on chopped leeks with carrots and kale.  Following through on my decision to eat more vegetables and fruit, I have also chosen to eat only half of what I would have normally of the entree.  That means I have a small box of lamb and leeks with one whole carrot of the six on the plate in the fridge.

This time I made it up the driveway with no problem thanks to the quarry derived granite grit I put on the slope yesterday.  The night has turned colder, heading down perhaps below 10 degrees by tonight.  9 degrees Acuweather describes as extreme cold; 4 degrees, predicted for tomorrow night is extremely cold.  These folks are not from here.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate, World History

Emergence

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Samhain                                       Waning Thanksgiving Moon

One of those days.  Snow brought our first drive way clearing by John Sutton, but not until both Kate and I had left.  I did the sidewalk.

The drive into the Sierra Club took about 15 minutes longer than usual, but I made it to the first interview on time.  I spent the next 3 hours with Michelle and Margaret as I will tomorrow, interviewing candidates for the Sierra Club policy position.  One candidate referred to us as the big boys at the State Capitol.  Hitch up those britches and let’s get to work.

On the way in and back I’m listening, as I mentioned yesterday, to lectures on Big History.  A topic important to Big History and important to me is the quality of emergence, a key mark of complexity, the theme that holds all the various epochs since the big bang together.  Emergence refers to qualities that become evident only after two or more other elements combine in some patterned way.  The easy example is hydrogen and oxygen.  Examine the two of them separately and you would not come up with the emergent proper that comes when you combine two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in a certain way.  Water.  Another, more complex example, is a human.  The individual constituents of the body, chemically, do not suggest the possibility of life if combined.

Emergence fascinates me because it is used by a few thinkers to reimagine the sacred.  I’m not sure the exact line of thought but it has my attention right now.

Then, when I got home, to a plowed driveway, I slipped and slid my car into a snowbank, a snowbank we had paid John Sutton to create.  This entailed a trip to the hardware store for granite grit, a session with Warren, my neighbor, who came to my aid with a tow rope, then scattering grit on the slope of our driveway.  Then, finally, I could get the car in the garage.  Minnesota is a place where sometimes getting the car in the garage at night is an accomplishment.

Aging, Cooking, Family, Memories, Weather +Climate

Thanksgiving Eve

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Samhain                                                      Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Grocery shopping this morning, the day before Thanksgiving.  Like traveling by air on a holiday.  Like going to see the Tower of London in July.  Like shopping on Black Friday.  I went early though and it wasn’t too bad.  There was the man with one turkey in his cart, a shocked disorientation on his face, his white hair wild.  A woman with black flats, a wool skirt below the ankle and a helmet like cloth hat strapped under her chin.  A woman and her mother, mom in a white faux fur coat, shiny cloth pants and dangly ear-rings with zircon or diamond but I’d bet zircon.  The clerk from Nevis.  I had a farm near Nevis.  Oh, where?  On Spider Lake.  Oh, a friend of mine has a resort on Spider Lake.  Did you find everything you were looking for?

The message board had advertisements for guys offering snow plowing services.  I memorized a number, 227-9899, and called for a free estimate when I got home.

Sleepy now, Latin this afternoon and evening, Thanksgiving tomorrow.  A restaurant meal for us this year, Axel’s Wood Roast in St. Paul.  Annie’s coming up.

Aging, Great Work, Health, Politics, Weather +Climate

Bad to the Bone

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Samhain                                            Full Thanksgiving Moon

Losing my wisdom impacted my jaw bone.  Bad.  It still hurts.  Very distracting and annoying.

Sierra Club tonight working on a hiring committee and then the Legcom, still trying to suss out what the elections meant.

In a strange way I think the challenge of a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor will make us think again about the whole political process and how we can make things happen.

Very nasty weather headed our way for the day tomorrow, a day when many people travel by car.  Glad I don’t have to go out and Kate only has to go to work and back.

Aging, Family, Weather +Climate

Yak Trax

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Samhain                                                Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

We have a sloping, long drive way.  Most days no big deal.  On days like today, when rain has fallen, then frozen, it requires special equipment:  yak trax.  They slip on over the shoe or boot and the rope like wire keeps you upright.  I bought a pair of these after going out for the paper one morning, not real long after my achilles repair.  My feet went up and I fell just like one of those cartoon characters, head smacking the driveway with no restraint.  Blood pulsing down my head I went inside, woke Kate up and said, “I think I need some help here.”  These days I slip on the yaktrax and walk with a grip to the mailbox.

Kate called this morning from her quilt retreat bus, on her way to Eau Claire.  A truck pulling two trailers had upended near the spot of her call.  That part of Wisconsin can be treacherous in this kind of weather.  She said the bus driver had it handled.  I hope so.

I’m going through an episodic pile reduction, pitching or filing paper of one kind or another that seemed important at one point in the past.  I always the feel when I finish.  Clarity.

Health, Sport, Weather +Climate

Extreme Cold?

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Samhain                                         Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

Cool today, even cooler tomorrow.  Then it begins to get chilly near the end of next week, just in time for Thanksgiving.  The accuweather folks call 9 degrees, the predicted low for November 24th, extreme cold.  Hmmm.  Can’t wait to see the adjectives in January.

(now this is extreme cold)

Got a good nights sleep last night, feeling pretty good today.  Just some residual thrumming, a low grade event.

I continue uninterested in the Vikings.  I’m taking this a Sunday at a time, but I feel my football habit beginning to weaken.  Hopefully, by the end of the season it will drop off and leave me alone.  On the other hand the Gopher’s basketball team…

Aging, Family, Humanities, Literature, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Heavy, Man, Heavy

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Samhain                                           Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

File under the things we do for love.  Kate asked me, as a big favor, if I would clear the sidewalk and a path to the mailbox.  I agreed albeit reluctantly. Never again.  This type of snow, laden with water, dense and prone to packing tight when moved, is just too hard for me to clear.  It clogs up the snowblower, so the snowblower’s out.  Lifting it is beyond my frame’s capacity.  I knew it, but I did it anyhow.  Ouch.

The snow took off the top of the cedar tree’s other trunk, too, so the whole thing will need to come down.  That means the chain saw, sometime soon.  That, I can do.

After pushing some snow around, I harvested the last of the leeks, fine looking vegetables.  The greens, kale and chard in particular, will continue growing until the ground freezes, so I’ll probably have one more harvest from them, too.

Most of the morning I tried to pack in some material not too different from the heavy snow:  Latin participles.  As participles, they share in the attributes of both the adjective–meaning declensions–and verbs–meaning tense and voice.  In addition the participles tense does not follow the verbs because the participle can cue action either concurrent, before or after the action of the verb.  In addition, just to confuse things, the present tense and the passive future tense use the verbs present tense stem to form the participle while the future tense and the passive perfect tense use the participle stem.  Yikes.

I know, I know.  I’m doing this on purpose.  I’m just venting.

Art and Culture, Cooking, Friends, Weather +Climate

Cooking on A Snowy Day

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Samhain                                                                 Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

A nap, then, making more chicken pot pies.  I have the various skills down now, so I make it up.  This one has a leek, onion, garlic bottom with a layer of chicken topped with corn and peas, all drenched in thickened chicken stock made from Kate’s boiling the chickens.  40 minutes or so in the oven and we have  future lunches, dinners ready to freeze and one ready to eat.  A lot of standing, the only part about it I don’t like.  Otherwise the cooking is a creative act for me, one I enjoy.

I haven’t been outside today since I will neither shovel nor plow these thick snows, heart attack snow.  It’s just too clumsy and heavy.  Besides, the snow will melt before it is anything more than a nuisance.  Glad we live in the burbs where we have no sidewalk on days like this.

Looked over my plan for my Thaw tour and I plan to keep it the same.  I’m not sure what happened last Thursday.  Might have been first time through jitters or somehow the chemistry between me and the group didn’t click.  Something.  If it happens again, I’ll assume it’s something to do with the tour. Then I’ll look at change.  Of course, I’ll still be in the equation.  Wherever you go, there you are.

A friend is in this photograph in front of the Swedish Institute.  He’s on the left in the blue vest.  This is the Minnesota Santas group at their pre-season social event.  What would a five year old think?

Aging, Friends, Garden, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Politics, Weather +Climate

Losing a Friend, More on Dams

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Samhain                                   Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

“In the view of conservationists, there is something special about dams, something…metaphysically sinister….the absolute epicenter of Hell on earth, where stands a dam.”

John McPhee Encounters with the Archdruid (1971)

We lost half a cedar tree in our backyard to heavy snow and wind.  We nurtured this tree from a small cedar bush into a two trunk tree that shaded our small patch of grass just beyond the deck.  These early heavy snows can be hard on evergreens since they retain needles throughout the winter, making them vulnerable to the wet and often large snow falls of late fall.  We’ll have a chance to do something new out there come spring.  Kate wants a lilac tree.

Here’s another thing about dams.  They generate, in addition to hydroelectric power, strong feelings.  People love’em or hate’m.  After they are built, they often become so much a part of the local ecology that people defend them from destruction with much the same fervor that folks oppose their construction in the first place.

There are a multitude of problems created by dams:  river flow is often altered and in turn alters the ecology both upstream and downstream, sediment pools at the base of dams robbing downstream deltas of needed material, archaeological sites can be destroyed or rendered extremely difficult to discover, populations are often displaced and, often, are denied access to the power produced by the dams which relocated them.

Equity questions abound as in the case of waters diverted to Los Angeles and Las Vegas from the arid Western states of Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Arizona and as in the case of a dam on the Zambezi river, built by Mozambique but because it needs military protection from rebel forces, forced to sell its electricity to South Africa at 1/7th of the world price.  Dams concentrate capital and political power in often unhealthy ways, especially in third world countries and especially when used as elements of a geopolitical strategy by such bureaucracies as the US Bureau of Reclamation.

More as the week goes on.