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.
-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.
-3 44% 17% 1mph WSW bar30.24 rises windchill-5 Winter
Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon
The day continues cold. We reached -15.8 this morning at 6:24AM. Since then, we’ve gained about twelve degrees. The windchill all day has been brutal.
Kate finished cushions for the window seat in the kitchen. I put Hilo on it while it was on Kate’s worktable to see if she would like it. She seemed nervous.
This week I’ve slept like a rock. An odd phrase, but apt in the nothing till morning meaning I intend here.
Yesterday I finished Fifty Degrees, the second in Kim Stanley Robinson’s eco-thriller/near future sci-fi trilogy which begins with Forty Days of Rain and ends with Sixty Days and Counting. His Mars trilogy is better as science fiction; it’s wonderful; but, this trilogy strikes closer to home and imagines a time period when we pass some of the tipping points talked about in the news these days. The Gulf Stream stops because the thermohaline barrier breaches. Weather patterns swing wildly from one extreme to the other. The West Anarctic Ice Shelf begins to leave land and drift into the ocean, causing several centimeters of sea level rise.
The book imagines a loose team of scientists, policy wonks and politicians who in their various spheres create solutions and fight to realize them before the worst becomes worse. There is also some Buddhist material, too. The characters are interesting and make the books worth reading, as was true of the Mars trilogy. Robinson imagines, however, a science triumphant, even dominant which I find suspicious. It was industrialists and technocrats who got us in this mess, with our individual complicity, and to imagine that rationalism, their primary tool, will dig us out seems suspect at the core.
The facet of it that rings true to me is the paradigmatically American approach of, keep trying until solutions come. That the scientific will play a necessary and perhaps even lead role I don’t question. I just don’t want an approach that leaves aside the many individual decision makers, those of us in our cars and at home with our dishwashers. This is science-fiction, not political-fiction, or a novel of manners (though it has some aspects of this genre), so the focus is congruent, yet I want to see us stretch all the way out for solutions.
-14 67% 21% 0mph W bar30.42 steady windchill-14 Winter
Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon
We hit -18 at 7 AM this morning. Sleep comes easy when the nights are cold. We have down duvets that adjust without the need for extra blankets or wiring. The day is clear and bright, though the outdoors has a certain foreboding at this temperature; cold weather can kill you and it wouldn’t take long.
Having said that I’m inside, warm and looking outside. Today I hope to finish my work on the religious influence on contemporary art piece I have to do for the docent book club in March. I want to get off an object list, book recommendation and an essay or two for advanced reading along with a series of questions/observations.
Kate and I will have our money meeting this AM, made much easier by her recent earnings and deferred compensation. We’re going to have to get another TV (darn) because the workout TV has developed a wavy line pattern that annoys big time. This means we’ll be all HD all the time, at least when we have HD programming.
Annie’s coming up today and will get our old Sony and the DVD player that goes with it. It’s a fine TV and never gave us any trouble, though we bought it in 1994. TV’s last a long time these days, so spending a good bit on one is not quite as illogical as it may seem.
-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.
-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.
