Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Friends, Sport, Weather +Climate, Writing

We Got Sizzle

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24  rises 29.89  NNW0 wchill 24   Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

The Internet is a strange phenomenon.  It functions as a time machine, bringing the future just a bit before it arrives and churning the past as old acquaintances find you again through one of the search functions or social networking sites.

It’s a good thing for me, because I was not such a good communicator before the web arrived.  I wrote a few letters, but I’ve never liked the phone much and the only reunions I ever attend are those of my high school.  Now though with Facebook,  Myspace and e-mail those old acquaintances are not forgot and often brought to mind.

Wrote about three pages of a new Homecomer.  Much better.  I needed to make it a continuation of the first two pieces in the Heresy Moves West series.  I had conceived of them as a set from the beginning, but I hadn’t begun the other one as if it fit with them.

We have some kind of frozen precipitation coming down right now, but I don’t what to call it.  Snert.  Sleeze.  Maybe sneeze?  Frozen drizzle is so uninteresting.  Fizzle?  Hey, I got it.  Sizzle.

I bought two new snow shovels.  I have an unfortunate adventuresome spirit in the purchase of snow shovels.  This time I bought one of a kind I saw used on the U.P.  You figure they have 3 to 4 times the amount of snow we have, they must know something.  The other one has a blade made of a tough (I hope) plastic that won’t snag on the nails on our deck–at least that was my conclusion.  I may find out as soon as tomorrow morning.

Just finished a lower body work out and aerobics. Tomorrow AM all morning I’ll write, then watch the vikings.  May Johnny Unitas have mercy on my soul.

GeekWorld, Travel, Weather +Climate

After the New Year, Backup

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orchard-inwinter300.jpg-3  bar rises 30.00  SW0  windchill -3  Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

The Orchard in Winter

2009 has well and truly begun.  The new year crept in on snow shoes, covered in a snowmobile suit and holding a cup of hot cocoa.  This was a Minnesota new year.

We’ve had a cold winter so far and it looks like it’s going to continue for a while.  Somewhere around the end of January most of us begin to have fantasies of being somewhere else.  Many fantasize someplace warm, but I tend to go with just another location.  My escape this year may be to the UP or Ashland, Wisconsin.  Still gathering information for that Lake Superior book.

Bill Schimdt suggested I back up this website onto my own computer since it hangs out in the cloud most of the time. I did that.  It was an interesting excursion into the bowels of the system.  It comes out in a form determined by mysql, the open source data base used by many servers.  The format is strange, made up of tables with columns of numbers.  They all make sense, once you begin to read carefully.  Anyhow, this is a once a month operation Bill suggests.  After I do it, then the regular backup I do every day will collect it and convey to my external hard disk.  I actually have two, but I still have to configure them the way I want.

Today I start writing Homecomer.  Look for it to be posted on the Liberal Faith page sometime after January 11th.

Faith and Spirituality, Memories, Weather +Climate

Home and Heart

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winter-solstice-08cbe2.jpg1  bar steep rise 30.42  WSW0   windchill 1  Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

Oh, man.  To get the trash out I had to blow the snow.  Underneath the snow is ice.  The snowblower with its knobby tires spun out and the only reason I stayed on my feet was the firm grip I had on the snowblower.  Never before had taking out the trash had a hint of danger to it.  Tonight it did.  After the snowblower and I went slip sliding away, I still had to roll both the trash containers down the long slope of our driveway.  Risky business.  Made it ok.

In doing research for Homecomer I looked back over many of my sermons for Groveland and noticed that I’ve written several that deal with home as an idea.  Home has a certain poignancy for me, since my estrangement from my father and his subsequent marriage to a woman who made the problem worse.  The town and the house where I grew up seem faraway to me, as if the warm and comfortable feelings associated with home got eaten away by the acids of my family quarrel.

The rightness or wrongness of it all has long been moot, yet the hollowness with which I’m left when it comes to home and nuclear family must have lead me to consider this theme.  It is a rich concept, one with so many layers and metaphorical possibilities that I have not tired of it.

Perhaps out of this search of mine for home I’ll  find ideas useful to others.  The current environmental crisis both has its roots in and is made more intractable by our American sense of mobility, of looking over the next horizon for a new frontier.  This makes it hard to learn about the home that greets us each evening.  Well, more on that in Homecomer.

The cold has come again and that will make the sleeping even better.

Weather +Climate

Snow and Blowing Snow

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12  bar steep rise  30.18  W9  windchill 5    Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

We have had snow and blowing snow most of the day.  Do not know how much right now, but the weather reports indicate as much as 6-10″.  That means snow blowing in the AM before Lois comes to clean the house.

Maybe tonight.  Forgot the trash goes out tonight.  Hmmm.

At 5:30 the webinar (new word I do not like much.  It feels clumsy.) on posting to the StarTribune weather blog set up.  Don’t imagine it will be too tough.

Did my upper body resistance before the call.  Aerobics after.  Yesterday my pulse rate stayed higher longer than usual.  Hope that is not a trend.

Still working on Homecomer, may start writing on New Year’s Day.

Art and Culture, Weather +Climate

Icons and Prints

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Snow.  Blowing snow.  Blowing snow onto the lawn.   Snow blowing.  Into my face at -12.  Whoa. That’s a wake-me-up.

I’m alert and ready for the day.

The icy stuff we got yesterday during the day came down before the snow.  Now it’s ice beneath the snow.  Slip slidin’ away.

After this a long lecture of prints in the MIA collection, then icons from the frozen steppes of mother Russia.  Seems right.

Art and Culture, Friends, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

A Cold One, Please

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-8  bar steep rise 30.33  0mph  S  windchill  -10   Samhain

Waning Gibbous Moon of Long Nights          Day  8hr  45mn

A cold one today.  This week will have the same kind of weather we usually get in late January.  Just fine with me.

A very busy day today with the Joan Herried Lecture at the MIA, then lunch at Butter and a tour of the Transcendental Icons exhibit at the Russian Museum.   This evening it’s the Woollys at chez Schmidt.

Realized I’ve been setting myself up to get tired today.  Thinking, oh, man.  Long day.  Geez, I may have to cancel something on Tuesday night. Well, I don’t have to think that way and I’m going to stop right now.

I’m going to wait just a bit to get at the snow on the driveway.

GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

A New Weather Gadget

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13  bar steep fall 29.92  0mph  SSW  windchill 13   Samhain

Full Moon of the Long Night

Davis Vantage Pro2 Weathersystemdavis_system.jpg

My new weather gadget has arrived.  It’s a datalogger that will allow me to post information from my weather station to the internet.  As a result of that capacity, I have just signed a contract with the Star-Tribune to contribute to a weather blog.  Basically, I agreed to give them all the information, my postings and pictures in return for them having the right to do anything they want with it, in perpetuity, without my being compensated.  Sweet deal, eh?

The weather stuff is a hobby and I’m glad to have the opportunity to help other folks get a more complete picture of what’s going on around the state.

Right now my weather report is:   cold with snow on the ground.  Forecast is more of the same.

I’ll let you know when it’s all set up so you can check out weather from the northern exurbs of the Twin Cities metro area.

Aging, Politics, Weather +Climate
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8  bar rises 30.11  0mph WNW  windchill 4   Samhain

Full Moon of Long Nights    Day  8hr  47m

I hear you saying often that you’re not turned on to politics. Well let me bring to bear the lessons of history. If you’re not turned on to politics the lesson of history is that politics will turn on you.—Ralph Nader, Countdown

Yes, Nader is right, but I wish he’d take his own lesson to heart.  Quixotic campaigns that drain the vote of the left and left independents have had their day.  Until or if the left can mount a credible candidate we should support the Democrats.

In this and many other ways I can tell I have reached old fogey status.  Twice in the last couple of weeks I’ve sent notes to the Sierra Club’s legislative committee that reveal, to me later, and probably to each member at the time, my more conservative approach.  With a $5+ billion budget deficit I think we should pitch our stuff in light of savings to the state budget.  Instead my colleagues queue up to decide which expletives are more appropriate for sulfide mining.

Used to be me.

We’ve had a cold December so far, considerably below normal.  This is the weather most of us here yearn for and miss as the winter’s have grown warmer.  The snow stays on the ground; the air is crisp.   Sleeping becomes a treat, a warm bear-in-the-den snuggle.

I have finally caught up, again, with my various chores including all the outside ones.  That feels great, but it does mean I have to reorient my daily activities and I’m still in the in-between place about that.  Soon.

Faith and Spirituality, Myth and Story, permaculture, Weather +Climate

A Time for Thought and Contemplation

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20  bar rises 29.94  3mph  NNE  windchill 13   Samhain

Waxing Gibbous Moon of Long Nights

Snow falling again.  3-4 inches or so by morning the weather folks say.  Winter has come in earnest.

Each year over the last three or four Kate and I have moved further and further from the mainstream Christmas culture. We have little in the way of decoration.  We give small gifts if any to each other.  The kids and kin still get holiday related presents but our home is an oasis.

This pleases me for the most part since my focus at this time of year is on the Winter Solstice and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  I say for the most part because there is still a sentimental side that likes the songs and the lights and the presents under the tree.  Mostly though I find this time of year most conducive to introspection, meditation and creation.

The areas in which we will plant new shrubs, a shade garden and all the bulbs planted this fall are now under mulch, the first two under black plastic and mulch.  Finally done.  Feels good.

Finished the Host.  It’s a strange, thin book with many pages.  I liked it, but the veiled theology and the conceit wore thin as I got further into it.  A lightweight read.