-7 bar rises 30.10 0mph SW windchill -9 Winter Solstice
Last Quarter Moon of Long Nights Day 8hr 44mn
- Tag Archives snow
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Icons and Prints
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.
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A Cold One, Please
-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.
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No Title
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.
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A Time for Thought and Contemplation
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.
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Happiness is low total cholestrol and high HDL
19 bar steady 29.95 0mph ENE windchill 16 Samhain
Waxing Gibbous Moon of Long Nights Day 8hr 50m
Moved more snow this am. My third favorite internal combustion engine and I hit the slopes this morning (our sloping driveway, that is) blowing yesterdays fluffy stuff away from the driveway and onto the yard. Over time this process can create impressive snow walls along the driveway, but none so high so far that the arc of snow our Simplicity puts out can’t clear it.
Then on to the grocery store for baking supplies. Kate is in hyper-cookie drive. We have cookies of this kind and cookies of this kind and cookies of prize winning kinds. I have cookies, especially cookies of the sugar cookie kind, currently at work becoming part of my body.
Speaking of my body. Got my lab results back from my physical. Total cholestrol 144 and hdl 46 (highest ever). All other numbers were, in the words of my physician, “Great.” This made me happy.
Missed my nap on Friday and Saturday. Took a two hour nap yesterday, then went to bed at 10:30 last night (I’ve turned that corner) and got up at 7:45. Guess those two days made me need the sleep.
Now I’m outside for the last–the very last–of the mulch.
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Snow, Clearing Snow
We got about an inch, maybe 2 of fluffy white stuff, powder maybe. I have to clear it before I take off for Minneapolis, otherwise it will pack and leave the driveway slick.
Up early today for a long day, 9-5 in the training, then add in drive in and drive home.
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A Magical Effect
26 bar steep fall 29.56 0mph NE windchill 26 Samhain
First Quarter Moon of Long Nights Day 8hr 53m
At last snow has begun to fall. Already we must have gotten an inch or so and it may well snow through the night. I have the patio light on so I can watch it fall. The reindeer, lit with white l.e.d. lights, turns its head back and forth, its wire frame body now sketched in fluffy snow. The lit holly and berries on the patio table also have snow cover, the lights blinking up through small mounds of white. We only have lights in the back and few at that. They do a touch of whimsy to the long winter nights.
A gentle snow has a magical effect on the heart as well as the landscape. It is one of mother nature’s outright expressions of joy.
Tomorrow I have agreed to go to a workshop on dismantling racism as I wrote earlier. When I was in seminary, I participated in anti-racism training seminars run by James and Mary Tillman. I even traveled to Atlanta and went a weekend long seminar with students from Morehouse University, one of the south’s premier black colleges. With Wilson Yates, a professor of sociology at United Theological Seminary, we created an anti-racism training kit complete with videos for rural congregations. At one point I worked with a professional program evaluation company, Rainbow, and evaluated the work of the James and Mary Tillman programs in various institutions.
Institutional racism and the unearned advantage of being white and male have been part of my political analysis ever since. That first round of work was now over thirty years in the past. It is a testimony to the intransigence and institutional nature of racism that now another generation has taken up the fight.
Part of me does not look forward to a long day on a difficult and unpleasant subject while another part of me is eager to get back to practical, political work on the issue. We’ll see how it goes.
Kate’s neck bothers her today. She has improved a lot in the last three weeks, but she has quite a ways to go before she can go back to her full time work schedule.
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Oh, Dear
31! bar steep rise 29.62 2mph S dewpoint 27 Spring? Snow
Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing
OK now. That’s enough! I woke up, looked out the window on April 26th, just 5 days before Beltane, the beginning of the Celtic summer, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but snow, snow, snow. Oh, dear.
To season the irony, I leave in a few minutes for the Arboretum and a day devoted to the Natural Rhythms of Time. I guess if it happened, it’s not unnatural, but the snow feels like it has come outside the natural rhythms. I don’t know what to expect from this day, but the notion of natural rhythms and a cyclical view of time are important to my own, still evolving sense of the cosmos.
No wonder the moon of growing has begun to wane. It’s retreating before the Hawthorn giant as he takes a return visit, stomping around and shaking his shaggy head. I can just hear him laugh.
My hydroponic setup continues to evolve. I’d say I should have edible lettuce by the end of next week. The tomato plant I put the under the light first is over 8 inches tall and leafing out more and more every day. The morning glories and cucumbers have begun a stretch toward the light, which means I need to reposition the megafarm under the light and move Emilies over. This is addictive. I can tell because I’m already planning how to make my own setup out of parts I can buy at Interior Gardens.
The piece that gets me is the growth and maturation of plants from seed. It never fails to excite me when I see a seedling appear. Not quite the same as that cute Gabe, but the principles are very much the same. DNA works its magic.
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Air Conditioning
33 bar steep fall 29.69 7 mph NE dewpoint 32 Spring
Waxing Crescent Moon of Growing
Just got a call from the Sierra Club inviting me to my own party. I said, “OK.”
The rain turned to part snow around 4:50PM and looks like it’s mostly snow now. As soon as the temps drop, it will transition to full snow and if it comes up this rate, it will accumulate.
Checked out airfare to Dallas/Ft. Worth in July. Only for family would I go to Dallas/Ft. Worth and only for a family reunion would I go in July. Once, long ago, I took the train from Indiana to Ft. Worth where my Dad’s brother, Charles, lived. On the way I got molested while taking pictures with my Brownie camera, but I said, “Don’t do that.” to the guy who put his hand between my legs and he went away. It was not a big deal then or now.
I hit Ft. Worth just as the temperature racked up 107. I didn’t know the temperatures in the world really got that hot. I knew it theoretically, but empirically? No way. This would have 1956/7 and I’d only experienced air conditioning on rare occasions. I remember repeating after I got back: I went from an air-conditioned train, to an air-conditioned car, to an air-conditioned house. This was remarkable.
What the temps will be like this time I have no idea, but air-conditioning has gone from a comment-worthy rarity to a personal necessity. I have no doubt we’ll be well cooled.
That weather seems a long way from the winds today, which hit 34 at 2:10pm, and the driving snow that builds up on our lawn as I write this.