Monthly Archives: December 2009

Aging, Cinema and Television, Family, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays

A Quiet New Year

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Winter                            Full Moon of Long Nights

We have gained back a few minutes since the Winter Solstice, so the New Year will arrive, as it does every year, with a bit more daylight than the grimmer days of mid-winter.

The neighbors have begun to shoot off fireworks.  They are a restrained lot for the most part, but when they perceive an excuse for celebration:  holiday, birthday, new year, they always bring out the fireworks.

(Methuselah Grove
The Methuselah Grove with the world’s oldest living things. The oldest living tree at 4,723 years, Methuselah, is not identified for its own protection.)

Kate and I have clinked glasses of champagne (her) and Fre (me), wished each other a happy new year and not shot off a single firecracker.  We did watch Jules and Julia, a middling movie in my judgment, though it had some interesting observations about cooking.  We also watched a great Nature program on the rise of the dog.  Apparently a Swedish geneticist has pinpointed eastern Asia as the origin of all dogs.

Kate’s neck has begun to bother her again this week and her left hip is now  worse than it was before the operation.  The back, though, has improved markedly.   A day at a time.

Well, a happy new year to you, whoever you are.  Back at you next year.

GeekWorld

Once in A Blue Moon, But Only Ten Years in a Decade

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Winter                                    Full Moon of Long Nights

“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.” – Benjamin Franklin

I want to weigh in on two critical debates germane to today and tomorrow.  First, the blue moon.  Current definition says a blue moon is the second full moon in the same month.  Since we had the full Wolf Moon at the beginning of December and now have the full Moon of Long Nights, this is a blue moon.  Therefore, anything you do over the next three days can be once in a. (astronomically speaking the moon is full for only a second, but the human eye can’t distinguish the difference among the night before, the night of, and the night after, so I say three days.)

Yes, Virginia, there is a second and older definition of a blue moon.*  I agree with the infoplease folks, however, that it is fussy for contemporary purposes and not as applicable to current life.  So, I agree that this is a blue moon.  Go for it.

Second debate I noticed in the newspaper letters to the editor.  A man claimed that decades receive their designation from multiples of the number 10:  2010, 2020 and so on.  Therefore, he claims our decade will not end this year, but a year from today.  He has forgotten two things.  First, the first decade is ’00–pronounced to rhyme with naughty.  That decade runs from 2000-2009.  Why? Well, as the dictionary definition says, a decade is ten years.  Count’em up.  Now the question is, at the end of the century, will we have an extra year?  Nope.  The 90’s will end in 2099 since December 31st, 2099 marks the day before 2100.  Doesn’t matter to me since time will have a much different quality for me then anyhow.

*The Other Kind of Blue Moon

May 2008’s blue moon qualified as such under an older definition, which is recorded in early issues of the Maine Farmer’s Almanac. According to this definition, the blue moon is the third full moon in a season that has four full moons. Why would one want to identify the third full moon in a season of four full moons? The answer is complex, and has to do with the Christian ecclesiastical calendar.

Some years have an extra full moon—13 instead of 12. Since the identity of the moons was important in the ecclesiastical calendar (the Paschal Moon, for example, used to be crucial for determining the date of Easter), a year with a thirteenth moon skewed the calendar, since there were names for only 12 moons. By identifying the extra, thirteenth moon as a blue moon, the ecclesiastical calendar was able to stay on track.

Weather +Climate

A Cold Day

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Winter                             Waxing Moon of Long Nights

It has been a cold day, not bitter cold, but temperatures in the teens with below zero lows.  This is a good time to be inside, working on projects like learning Latin, writing a novel, studying Daoism.  All of which, it so happens, I’m doing.  It’s like gardening in the summer, cultivating those things that are appropriate to the season.

Boy, did I have a nap this afternoon.  I hit the bed and went straight to sleep, going hard enough in to have a solid dream or two.  Woke up and I was groggy.  That’s normal for me, by the way.

Garden, Great Work, Politics, Travel, Weather +Climate

With Thoughts of Green, Growing Things Dancing in My Head

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Winter                                Waxing Moon of Long Nights

We’ve warmed up to 0.  Midmorning’s brittle sunshine diffuses in the hazy, partly cloudy sky.  The whippets go outside, pee, turn around and come right back inside.  Rigel, unphased, continues to hunt around the machine shed, staying on the hunt for hours at a time.  Sometimes she comes in after midnight, too.  Vega prefers the comforts of home, a couch, a bone, heated air.

A subtle change has occurred in my inner world.  I have begun to wonder where the seed catalogs are.  I have one in hand but I didn’t like their seeds so I’m waiting for others.  This year’s garden will benefit from last year’s mistakes.  In particular I’m going to make a real effort with leeks, have a better onion crop (sets), plant fewer greens and harvest more regularly (in general), beets, beans, one squash, not many tomatoes since we stocked up this year.  I’ll plant potatoes again, too, but this time I will store them in the basement rather than outside in the garage stairwell.

It is  time, too, to get back to work on legislative matters for the Sierra Club.  I got a call last night from Josh Davis about a meeting of the Club’s political committee next week.  No tours for the time being, just fine with me.  After Sin and Salvation followed by the Louvre, I can use a rest.

In the middle of January I head out to Denver for a week to take in the Stock Show with Jon and Jen and  Ruth and Gabe.  This is a premier event of the western US.  I’m going just to see what it’s like.

Sport

Vikings Raid Repelled in First Wave

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Winter                          Waxing Moon of Long Nights

The Vikings.  In Chicago.  Outside.  Terrible first half.  Awful.  Yuck.

After the game.  A better 4th quarter followed by a Petersen fumble in overtime to set up a touchdown pass by Cutler.  I think we may have restored Cutler’s reputation all by ourselves.

Weather +Climate

We wait.

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Winter                                      Waxing Moon of Long Nights

SCATTERED AMOUNTS IN EXCESS OF 20 INCHES PROBABLE. THIS EVENT MAY BECOME COMPARABLE TO THE HALLOWEEN SNOW STORM OF 1991

Yes, we have the occasional tornado and derecho.   Those are the most damaging and scary weather phenomena that visit us, wrecking their way through country side and towns and cities.  For the most part though, we do not have an equivalent of the hurricane, the fire storm, earthquake or big floods (with the exception of Red River Valley in the far northwestern part of the state).  The only volcanoes we have in the state are long dead.

We have a mid-continental climate, however, and it can throw some impressive weather our way.  These winter storms* that come at us announce themselves days ahead of time.  The National Weather Service and private meteorologists working for newspapers, TV and radio work hard to keep us informed.

Minnesotans look forward to these kind of storms since thriving during difficult winter weather defines us as a state and a people.  We all have winter storm stories, whereas only a few have tornado or derecho stories.  Our snow removal system, a sophisticated example of good government, copes with whatever comes, but a really big storm like the one whose northern border is now just south of the metro area, can overwhelm them for a time, after all there is a financial and logistical limit to how many snowplows you can deploy.

Right now we’re waiting.  I’ve made a lot of leek and potato and chicken noodle soup.  Went to the grocery store yesterday and have plenty of gas for the snowblower.  We have a four wheel drive vehicle with a low 4WD if we need it.

Let it snow.

*.A MAJOR STORM SYSTEM PRODUCING HEAVY SNOW…POTENTIALLY NEAR RECORD IN SOME LOCATIONS…AND HAVING CONSIDERABLE IMPACTS ON HOLIDAY GROUND AND AIR TRAVEL…WILL BEGIN ACROSS SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL MINNESOTA AND WEST CENTRAL WISCONSIN BY TONIGHT. SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS BY THURSDAY MORNING ARE EXPECTED TO BE BETWEEN TWO AND FIVE INCHES. THE SNOW WILL LAST THROUGH THURSDAY AND CHRISTMAS WITH SIGNIFICANT ACCUMULATIONS FORECAST. THESE ACCUMULATIONS WILL LIKELY BE IN EXCESS OF ONE FOOT…WITH 20 INCHES OR MORE IN SOME LOCATIONS.

TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS ARE HIGHLY LIKELY TO EXCEED ONE FOOT OVER CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN MINNESOTA AND FAR WESTERN WISCONSIN…WITH SCATTERED AMOUNTS IN EXCESS OF 20 INCHES PROBABLE. THIS EVENT MAY BECOME COMPARABLE TO THE HALLOWEEN SNOW STORM OF 1991. GIVEN THE TIMING OF THIS SYSTEM…HOLIDAY ROAD AND AIR TRAVEL WILL BE SIGNIFICANTLY IMPACTED.

A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE FORECAST THAT WILL MAKE TRAVEL DANGEROUS. ONLY TRAVEL IN AN EMERGENCY. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL…KEEP AN EXTRA FLASHLIGHT… FOOD…AND WATER IN YOUR VEHICLE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY.

Cooking

Soupy

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Winter                             Waxing Moon of Long Nights

A soupy day with chicken noodle soup finished, a leek broth made and a leek and potato soup within 10 minutes of being done.  It requires some finish work, in this case using an immersion blender.  I used 5 pounds of leeks and 5 pounds of potatoes, so we’ll have this soup for some time.  It freezes well, or so the internet material suggests.

Sad news about our potatoes and carrots.  We had our potatoes, a large crop, in the garage stairwell.  Since our garage has insulation, the stairwell usually stays above freezing in the winter, just right for potatoes.  When we had the cold snap though, the snowblower bay garage door stuck open unbeknown to either of us.  They froze.  After freezing, it turns out, potatoes just don’t seem all that edible.  So, no potatoes.  A lesson for next year.

Lesson number 2.  You can leave carrots in the ground until it freezes.  After that you can’t get to them.  Seems obvious enough, but it slipped past my attention.  Carrot compost in the carrot bed now.

Some learning curves are steeper than others.  I would sure hate to have learned these lessons on my homestead on the prairie.  Lessons like these could have been fatal.

Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Great Wheel, Holidays

Monks and Prisoners

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An interesting Christmas note to my brother Mammoths from a monk at Blue Cloud Abbey in South Dakota

winter-solstice-1

MERRY CHRISTMAS JIM AND ALL WOOLLY MAMMOUTHS (sic),

Thanks for those elegant photographs, Jim. As much as I hate winter, I have to admit a work of art when I see one.

Recently I went to a meeting at the prison in Appleton, Minnesota. The facility is closing the first of February. At present there are only 230 inmates in a building that can  accommodate 1500. I suggested to the inmates that maybe they could finish out their sentences at Blue Cloud Abbey because we have plenty of room and so few vocations.

One of the guys asked his fellow inmates, “Would you like living with a bunch of old monks?” One of them answered, “It might be better than  living with a bunch of old convicts.” Some people think the prison will reopen soon because crime is increasing. Monks are decreasing but convicts are increasing.

The cat just came into my office. This fall someone dropped off a cat and fled. Brother Chris has assumed the care of the winter-sol-2cat.  It lives in the garage but when doors are left open, Da Cat (that’s its name) strolls down the ramp and into the house.

A Blessed Christmas to you and yours (and stay out of the blizzard)!

Benet

(note:  these pics are by Woolly artist Jim Johnson who does not know whether he is a falcon, a storm or a great song.)

Weather +Climate

Good Storm Risin’

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Winter                                  Waxing Moon of Long Nights

Winter storms are like great ocean liners.  They move through the ocean of atmosphere with deliberate speed, moving no faster than necessary and sometimes putting into port for awhile before continuing their path.  Right now the WS (Winter Storm) Minnesota Christmas sails toward us, apparently planning a lengthy stay  here, enough time for the sailors to get off and get into trouble.  A small craft warning is in effect, wheeled vehicles will not be able to get out of the way. A good deal of the ship’s cargo  will be offloaded onto  your lawn, driveway or street.

christmas09storm

Santa Buddha may need his most tranquil Self to deliver toys and good will here on Christmas Eve.

Meanwhile I’m headed out to the grocery store.  Gonna make soup, hunker down and wait for the storm.

Minnesota, Weather +Climate

Snow Has Come. Will Stay At Least Through Christmas.

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Samhain                                       Waning Wolf  Moon

We’ve had steady snow since about 10:30 a.m.  It began to pick up after dark and we now have a couple of inches or more; the leaves have disappeared.  The rocks have become snowy bulges as the wind whips what snow has fallen from place to place.  The warnings have expanded their scope and increased their estimation of snowfall amounts, here in Anoka County we may see 6-8 inches.

(Armistice Day Blizzard, 1940.  MHS)

Though these numbers may not fit the technical definition of a blizzard, falling/blowing snow with visibilities under 1/4 mile for at least 3 consecutive hours, sustained winds over 35 mph, but if you happen to get on a road filled with blowing  snow, as you well might, the difference will not mean much to you.  Translation, travel will be dangerous tomorrow.  If you  don’t have to go, stay put.

Paul Douglas says he does not see above freezing weather between now and December 25th, so he’s predicting a white Christmas.

The barometer has a steep downward trajectory having fallen .6 of an inch Hg since midnight, very near the mark for bombogenesis which I mentioned in a post early.  This is the equivalent of 20 millibars in just under 24 hours and the definition of bombogenesis is a drop of 24 millibars in 24 hours.  The winds have gusted here already to 24 mph and may go much higher, probably will go up to 35 mph or 40 mph.