Aging

So Cold I Forgot to Post This

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Winter                              Waning Moon of Long Nights                   -18

Since it is -18 now, at 11:15 p.m. it will get cold by morning.  Don’t know whether it will reach -25 as it did this a.m., but it would not surprise me.

Kate has been reading and reading and reading.  Ever since we got her a Kindle for her birthday back in August, she’s used it a lot.  Over the last few days she’s gone on a real tear.

I’ve been reading a good bit, too.  Current book, The Glass Devil, by Helen Tursten, a Swedish mystery writer.  Almost done.  A bleak book in many ways.  Put alongside the Girl Who Played With Fire and the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, however, it paints a consistent picture of Sweden.   Clean, minimalist, family oriented with a certain sexual candor.  Educated, but somewhat insular.  (peninsular?) Also heir to all the vices that plague us all:  sex, drugs, violence, gangs, family dysfunction.

Well, ok.  I’m also reading Descarte’s Bones, a great read from Mark Odegard.  A Short History of Daoism.  Those are my main efforts right now.

Garden, Weather +Climate

Clarifying. Stimulating. Oh, All Right–Damn Cold.

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Winter                             Waning Moon of Long Nights

As Bilbo said, I have been there and back again.  Up here in the land of the midnight hobbit it remains cold, -7 now at noon.  On days when the high is below zero you know for sure you live in a cold part of the world.

I can look out the window of this room though and see beds where daffodils and tulips, iris and dicentra, liguria and lilies lie, apparently dead, but actually taking  a long winter’s sabbatical from photosynthesis.  Their presence, more than anything else, convinces me that the blooms of yesteryear are not figments of a hypothermic crisis, but rather the wonder they are.

The deep cold does not stop life here.  There were many folks at at the grocery store, a normal crowd for a Saturday.  An active snow storm, a severe one, can cause folks to stock up and sit tight, but the cold is part of the territory.  You deal with it, much as I assume the Bedouin do the heat.

GeekWorld

Apophis

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Winter                                 New Year’s Day            Full Moon of Long Nights      -11

Russia to Plan Deflection of Asteroid From Earth   asteroid-apophis-625x450

(Apophis* the meteor Russia plans to deflect)

I read about the Russian’s plan the other day and a bizarre thought crossed my mind.  I’ve watched several different asteroid approaches the earth movies and brave scientists or working class astronauts save the day.

Here’s the crazy idea:  what if an intended deflection does not work and has the unintended consequence of pushing an asteroid closer to us rather than further away.  In other words what if the big asteroid strike comes from human error not bad like orbital mechanics?

As these things move from science fiction movie into tomorrow’s news, we have to face our fallibility.  Just sayin’

*Known in scientific circles as both 2004 MN4 and 99942 Apophis, this 885-foot-long space rock has a fairly good chance of impacting the Earth within a quarter century..

After making a breathtakingly close pass on Friday the 13th in April 2029 — less than 10 percent of the distance between Earth and the moon — Apophis will have about a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting Earth in 2036 when it swings back around.

To better understand Apophis’ danger to Earth, some scientists advocate sending a transmitter to the asteroid’s surface to better track its movement.

Aging, Great Work, Health, Politics

The Year We Make Contact

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Winter                                     Full Moon of Long Nights

Hmmm.  You know you’re getting old when the sequels to movies, one’s you saw when they came out, are now getting passed by the actual dates.

The year we make contact.  Indeed.

What will the next 10 years be like?  On an equally geezerly note the end of this new decade, Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, will find me 72 years old.  I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve known people that were 72 but I wouldn’t let my daughter marry one.  Of course, I don’t have a daughter, so that makes that easy.

My sense, my hope is, that in this coming decade, the teen years of this century, we will come to grips with climate change and in a way that will have a lasting, positive impact.  We won’t have completed the Great Work, the movement to a benign human presence on the earth, but we will have made substantial strides.

Terrorism will decline as a front-burner issue, though it will remain with us, if for no other reason than the continuing disparity between rich and poor countries, disparities exacerbated over the next ten years by the continued growth of India and China.

The Millennium generation will push us further toward a race neutral or race positive world.  It may be that we will develop the strength to see difference as a possibility for enrichment.  Or, maybe not.  I hope the tension begins to move in such a way that the fulcrum tips toward embracing pluralism.

At the end of this decade the grandkids will be ten years older:  Ruthie 13 and Gabe 11.  Yikes.

By the end of this decade I hope Kate and I have got this gardening thing well integrated into our lives.

I hope for, I want a move toward, as one foundation puts, “a more just, verdant and peaceful world.”

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.