Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Mulberry Trees in Armenia

February 4, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

31 91% 26% 3mph N bar29.80 steady windchill29 Imbolc

Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

This snow has a lot of different forms: sleet, snert, wet snow, less wet snow. At least it didn’t plug the snowblower. As I followed the snowblower down the driveway and back up, I had these background/foreground visions: background–I’m layered up, in swiftly falling snow and operating a loud orange machine; foreground–I’m sitting on the lanai of our oceanview room in the Westin looking out toward the western horizon of the Pacific ocean as the sun begins to set.

The snow makes the transition from Minnesota to Hawai’i a nice contrast.

Getting stuff done today and tomorrow since on Wednesday I leave for Dwelling in the Woods. My day without the guys I plan to snowshoe and read about Taoism, prepare for my workshop. During the retreat I plan to snowshoe at least once a day.

Picked up some dried mulberries today at the co-op. Sweet, but not local. Not hardly. From Turkey. It just occurred to me that I read an article this afternoon about silk scarf makers in Armenia, next to the Turkish border. They had a historic industry, but the Armenian genocide wiped it out. This town had just received a grant from the EU to grow, mulberry trees!

Faith and Spirituality, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Fallen Oak Leaves in the Snow

February 3, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

26 71% 24% 1mph EES bar30.02 falls windchill25 Imbolc

Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

The Superbowl program started at 1pm. 1pm. Kickoff isn’t until 5:17pm. Geez.

Spent late morning putting together my workshop/presentation for the Woolly Retreat. I plan to read sections from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, talk about it a bit as a fable for our time and a bit about what I call the ur-faith. The way to name it still is not clear to me. Maybe that will come as the workshop proceeds. Sometimes presenting things to others helps flesh them out, identify new angles or flaws in the conception. The sacrament I posted a few days ago will follow the reading and then we’ll talk.

I may use a way to get inside material I learned in seminary. In this method the audience gets an invitation to take on one of the roles in the reading, to hear the material being read from that person’s perspective. In SGGK characters include Arthur, Gawain, Guinevere, the Green Knight, the two women in Hautdesert’s castle, and the servant who leads Gawain to the Green Chapel. Sometimes this cracks open poetry or scripture in a way nothing else can.

Fallen oak leaves have begun to show through the snow. The boulders in our boulder walls now peak out from caps of white. This is an unlovely aspect of snow. Snow has its most beautiful moments as and just after it falls. If it remains cold, as it often does after a big snow, the pristine character of the snow can last for days. Sometimes it does glint and sparkle in the sun. Hope we get a big whack just before I leave for Dwelling in the Woods.

Weather +Climate

The Undergods

January 21, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

4 70% 19% omph W bar30.55 windchill4 Winter

Full Winter Moon

The Giants are the undergods–oops, I meant to write underdogs, but I like undergods, too–against the Übergods, the New England Patriots. Long years ago, when I began to love anthropology, a favorite professor, David Scruton, said Americans are infracaninophiles, that is, lovers of the underdog. Maybe we’re also infratheophiles, lovers of the undergods. Anyhow, I wouldn’t count the Giants out. Their defense seems pretty sticky and Eli Manning and Plaxico Burress have a groove going. If they can get Bradshaw and Jacobs going early, they’ll have a chance. We’ll see.

A light snow. The slightly warmer temps produce more interesting weather. The cold builds character and the days are usually bright and clear, but warmer weather often brings back the snow. We need some snow since the older snow got thinned out during the January thaw and we look a bit straggly here.

On to the Transcendentalists and life in the thought lane.

As Bill Schimdt noticed on yesterday’s post, the NFL pinged back. Bill said he was sure only the computer read my post. I’m sure he’s right.

Art and Culture, Weather +Climate

Art’s Beginnings

January 19, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

-2 46% 20% 0mph S bar 30.37 steep drop windchill-4 Winter

Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

As predicted the day has continued cold, thought we’ve warmed a bit from the early readings. Still, when the high is below zero, you know you’re dealing with a bitter time. We have the most trouble with the whippets when the temperatures drop. They have zero body fat, so they do not like to go outside. This increases the pressure on their bladders. Accidents do happen.

The work of the day involves the waning religious influence on art in the modern era, though, as I’ve learned, the decline can really be seen post-Renaissance. James Elkins makes a creditable argument for the pervasive nature of religious art during most of the millennia of human existence. Art’s beginnings lie somewhere in our murky transition toward full consciousness, a transition accelerated when humans realized they would die. If not in the service of the hunt, a ritual activity in its earliest form, then in the service of funeral rites, early humans drew elegant animals on cave walls and adorned their dead with red ochre, feathers and other items felt necessary to the afterlife.

This general trend continued for many cultures well into the modern era, but in the West, sometime in the Renaissance/post-Renaissance period, religious art became a particular kind of art, rather than the primary purpose for artistic work. It was during the Renaissance that an emphasis began on the skill of the artist in addition to the importance of the subject matter rendered. These two factors, appreciation of the talents of individual artists and the addition of subject matter like history, portraiture and mythopoetic themes opened a fissure between what had previously been art’s sole domain, the religious, and other forms of art.

A Gospel for These Heavens and This Earth

January 18, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

-10 59% 23% 0mph WSW bar30.36 steep rise windchill-12 Winter

Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

How low will it go? Pretty low. These are the days for staying inside, watching movies, drinking hot chocolate, reading and studying. I’ll do all these tomorrow.

Driving into the MIA this week, on Monday and then again today, I saw sundogs. A sundog creates a rainbow like lens, in this case pointing toward the west. As I understand the presence of a sundog indicates ice crystals in the air which act as a prism. Just checked, that’s right. Also, it says they always form at 22 degrees on either side of the sun.

Both days an earth centered faith was on my mind, as it often is these days, in fact, these last few years. It is not, perhaps, most accurate to say earth centered, since the sundog itself is a good reminder that any faith which grounds itself in the material reality of this world also relies, for life itself, on the heat and energy received from the sun. So, I don’t know, perhaps a solar system centered faith. The earth’s orbit around the sun orchestrates the seasons and the moon pulses the oceans through bays and onto beaches with tidal flows. Even a rudimentary understanding of the creation of the solar system acknowledges the intimate nature of our relationship to other planets that share Sol. So, there’s a puzzle here in terms of where to focus, but I don’t think the parameters are much wider than the solar system, although there is the whole star formation, interstellar dust cloud thing which makes us part of the ongoing galactic reality. Even so, those relationship are distant both in distance and in terms of direct affect, if any on our daily lives, where Sol makes our life possible and its planets are our neighbors.

Anyhow, more thoughts on the notion of Ge-ology. What I might write, rather than a Ge-ology, is a gospel for these heavens and this earth, a faith focused on the intricate and delicate and complex interdependence between and among life and the inanimate yet critical context in which it exists; a celebration of the wonderful and the awesome we experience each day. Our heart beats. The winds blow. A lover or a child smiles. The sun warms our face. We recall times that seem long ago; we think and imagine. The stars shine. Snow falls. These are miracles which do not require walking on water, a Pure Land or a night ride to Jerusalem. No exodus or burning bush.

Gospel means good news. I see this faith as good news for all humankind and for all living creatures on our planet. It means we can turn our face toward each other and our hands toward the earth in love, not lust.

As I see it, this is the ur-faith, the one prior to all the others. It came naturally to indigenous communities through faith traditions like Taoism, Shintoism, Native American faiths, the faith of those who painted Lascaux and who erected Stonehenge. Are all these the same, no, of course not; are they all similar in their insistence on loving attention to the reality within which we dwell and move and have our being? Yes. This is the ur-faith because it was one we all know in our deep heart; it is not exclusive, if you want to follow the path of this ancient faith and the way of Jesus or Buddha or Shiva or Mohammad, there is no conflict.

Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Put on the Mad Bomber, Baby. It’s Cold Outside.

January 15, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

-3 78% 27% 0mph WNW bar30.16 steady windchill-3 Winter

First Quarter of the Winter Moon

“Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, or accept another’s dogmatism.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

La Ñina, el ñino’s cooler sister, has forced the jet stream to the south, leaving us without atomspheric protection from the frigid arctic air. There is nothing but water and tundra between us and the North Pole, so when this happens our temperature plummets. It was -9 at 7:00 AM this morning. Though no one who doesn’t share our winter understands it, this is the weather that defines us as Minnesotans and most of us look forward to it. It requires coping skills passed on from generation to generation and from natives to newcomers. In the old days we brought our car batteries inside, bought engine block heaters. Now we buy wicking thermal underwear, Mad Bomber hats, Sorel boots and put our cars in garages if we can. When I moved to Minnesota in 1970, the seminary housing had electrical outlets in front of each parking spot in the student residence parking lot. I thought, oh, my.

The snow cover has faded, though it’s still there. If we don’t get more snow, I’m going to have to lay down straw in a few spots, though the areas I had concerns about, mostly the newly planted garlic bed, already have their mulch.

GeekWorld, Politics, Weather +Climate

Yes, You’re Right. It’s Hillary, not Hilary.

January 9, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

12 86% 28% 1mph NNE bar30.09 rises windchill9 Winter

New Moon

If I give you a pfennig, you will be one pfennig richer and I’ll be one pfennig poorer. But if I give you an idea, you will have a new idea, but I shall still have it, too.

First, an apology to the Hillary Clinton campaign. My chief proof reader (Kate) caught me in theft of an l from Hillary’s name. Sorry about that, Hill. Her win in New Hampshire should sharpen up her campaign and her campaign presence, just as it will do the same for Obama’s. Both of them need to move a little more to the left for my tastes (ok, a lot more.), but their eventual campaign against the Republican, whoever it will be, will be stronger for having had to clarify their identities and stances. This is what the primary season does, when it works properly, and, much to my surprise, it is.

One small step for technology this morning. Kate wants to see a documentary about Jewish Americans broadcast this evening while she’s at work. I went into the dvr menu, found the how to record stuff, clicked a couple of times and we’re ready. I’ll believe it when I see it, but, geez, it seemed easy.

The weather has turned cold again and I’m happy. As if to underscore my let winter be winter and spring be spring attitude, we had a series of January tornadoes that reached as far north as Milwaukee. This seems to define a world out of joint, whether climate change or bad luck. Get out that book of Job. It’s the only way to deal with this kind of random nonsense.

Weather +Climate

A Snow Day

December 23, 2007 Charles Leave a comment

14 83% 25% 3mph WNW bar 29.60 steep rise windchill11 Winter

The Full Cold Moon

Snow began in the early morning and it has kept on steady since then. The winter brown where grass had begun to peak through our first snow cover is gone, replaced with a carpet of white. Most of the boulders in our garden tiers have disappeared. It is quiet.

From where I sit as I write this the magnolia, the grey dogwoods, the red and white oaks have changed from their summer green clad to a seasonally appropriate white. These days, the essence of what it means to live in northern latitudes, change the landscape from the faded browns of late fall to a soft and fluffy world of unexpected joys. The bird feeders have small caps of snow.

It may be, at our house, a year without Christmas, but it is not a year without joy or holiness. Both have come today, the second day of winter. Blessed be.

Weather +Climate

Skinner and Snow

November 17, 2007 Charles Leave a comment

34 74% 37% 7mph windroseNNE bar steep rise dewpoint27 First Quarter of the Snow Moon Holiseason

At 9AM this morning we had snow. A bit accumulated on the outdoor furniture on our deck, then it was gone. The season teases us, reminds us how it could be while withholding what we want, a daylong nightlong daylong snow complete with howling winds and drifts as big as cars.

In years past, back when I was, say, 40, Minnesota would reliably produce such weather, but now it falls in that strange realm of behavioral psychology, intermittent reinforcement. Any Skinnerian can tell you that that intermittent is the most powerful reinforcer. It explains gambling’s dark charm and the peculiar frustrations of Viking’s and Cub’s fans. It also explains why we Minnesotan’s now look so eagerly at each new flake in the sky hoping that this will be the one when the land returns to normal, at least for a day.

Snow seems faraway right now. Oh, well, I have plenty to do today. Construct a magic of myth tour, grocery shopping, cooking supper, a workout. And, if I have time, finish my filing. Got a lot done yesterday, but not all.

Weather +Climate

Changing the Scenery

November 9, 2007 Charles Leave a comment

33 82% 38% 0mph windroseE dewpoint28 bar steady Ordinary Time New Moon

First snow. After a scatter of flakes, a beady snow dropped onto our deck, bouncing before it came to a rest. Didn’t last long, but it was enough. This first snow has a magical quality, a true signal that the theatre of the seasons has changed scenes and scenery. Clouds give the day an intimate quality, the sky closer to the earth. The brown of dead lives and withered perennials has small shadows of white.

This is the time the evergreens begin to stand out. The pachysandra on the third tier under the Colorado Spruce is a nest of shiny green leaves; the cedar trees in our woods stand tall, their flat needles green against the leafless oaks, big-tooth aspens, ash and black locust.

In my northern heart this time, called by the Celts Samain, through to Imbolc, the time when lambs came into the belly in old Ireland, around February 1st, defines me and those who live here. This is our time as summer is the time of Southern California and Arizona, Texas and New Mexico. Part of it is because of what we endure, for them the heat and aridity, for us, the cold and the snow, but it is more, much more, than that. It is the difference between cranking up the snowblower and pushing the button on a power boat, between walking through knee deep snow, exhilirated, and walking through 107 heat refreshed by the mists from those outdoor cooling devices. To my northern heart exhiliration trumps wilting in the heat; but I know that’s my bias, a bias not shared by the hundreds, thousands of Minnesotans who become snowbirds each winter, migrating to warmer climes.