• Tag Archives ice

  • Yes, Virginia. It Still Snows in Minnesota.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                               Woodpecker Moon

    The night came cold and wet, slush frozen, then snow piling up, now in the morning branches sag heavy with soggy white.  A late season snow.  The kind for basketball tourneys or interrupting plans.  Just right for that.

    Still, it’s a nod to winter, a sort of, yes, we still know how to do this kind of thing notice on the part of the weather gods.  Not good for the trees or the shrubs, but, water, if it can get into the ground.  Good in that way.  We need more plus some.

    (my photo from December 11, 2010.  Photoshopped.)

    After the pedal to the metal push over the weekend on the Sports Show, I’m reluctant to dive into the next big thing, finishing the novel.  That’s definitely next.  Yesterday evening I did do some Latin in what would have been my Tuesday exercise slot.  That’s the new plan.  Made some headway, too.

    Last night the last Photoshop class of four.  Asked how long it took to get good at Photoshop, our instructor said, “Oh, years.”  I believe him.  This stuff does not come cleanly, quickly for me.  More like Latin, a struggle, two steps backward, then another one. Maybe later, progress.  Well maybe not that bad, but it felt like it last night.

    Partly I drove over in the rain and thought what a nasty drive it would be back home if the temperature slipped below 32.  All that rain and slush.  Ice.  No one’s driving condition of choice, except 19 year old boys with muscle cars.  So, I left a half an hour early.  And got back home just as the below freezing temps hit and the rain turned to snow, the slush to ridged ice.  Still had to take the trash out.  Of course.  But nothing like driving in the stuff.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • A Jinn Out of the Bottle

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                Waning Bloodroot Moon

    Round Lake still has ice, April 1st.  Ice out is way late this year.

    Put Kate on the Northstar this morning, headed for MSP, terminal 2, for her Southwest flight to Denver and granddaughter Ruth’s 5th birthday.  Kate gets a real kick out of visiting the grandkids, a sort of grandma thing.  It’s great to see.  Being retired makes all this much easier for her.

    Fukushima nuclear disaster appears to grow worse though sorting out the news reports is difficult.  The utility company appears less than forthcoming with data and the Japanese government has been unusually slow, too.  As Bill Schmidt said at Sheepshead, the tsunami and the earthquake have created much greater human tragedy so far.  Over 10,000 dead found and probably and equal number sucked out to sea never to be found.

    Those folks need our attention and our care, as do humans experiencing disasters natural or manmade anywhere.

    And yet, the media focuses on the nuclear story.   This is a genie that we know, one loosed from its billions of years old bottle, a source of energy confined to the bright heart of stars until the last century.   We say we control it, but like fire, if it gets away from us, its elemental nature can overwhelm our defenses, poison our world.  The record is mostly good, consider all those reactors functioning all these years without an accident, but three, three acknowledged accidents, roils the psyche.  What have we done?  Could such an unusual confluence of events happen here or over there, or over there?

    This is a story whose end is not yet written, one whose significance will become clear later, perhaps years, maybe even centuries from now.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Commentary on the news Family Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Snow in LA. Earthquake in Indiana. Ice Here. End Times?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                                                         Waning Moon of the Winter Solstice

    Headlines you never expected to see:

    Wind gusts topping 90 mph topple trees in L.A. area, blocking roads; snow closes I-15

    Magnitude 3.8 Earthquake Rattles Indiana

    Whoa.  Earthquake.  Indiana?  What the…   Here’s an example of today’s news coverage.  My old buddy Ed Schmidt made a joke on his facebook page about an earthquake.  Just to be sure I checked google.  Sure enough:

    “Officials from the U.S. Geological Survey said an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.2 has been registered in Indiana, just north of Indianapolis near the small (hmmm. where are their fact checkers?) town of Kokomo (46,000+).

    (USGS earthquake epicenter map)

    No damages or injuries were reported as a result of the quake that hit at 6:55 a.m. central time, officials said.

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    Some people in the Chicago area said they felt shaking from the earthquake, though it’s unclear if a 4.2 magnitude quake in Central Indiana could be felt as far west as Cook County…

    The earthquake’s epicenter was about three miles beneath a farm field a short distance south of Pingree Grove, near Route 20 and Switzer Road in western Kane County.

    That quake was caused by a previously unknown fault line that has not generated any shocks since geologists started keeping track 150 years ago.

    In Indiana, Howard County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Rogers says the department was bombarded by phone calls after the quake from people wondering what had happened. He says some people reported hearing a loud boom.

    Indiana University geologist Michael Hamburger told Indianapolis television station WTHR the quake was felt across Central Indiana and into western Ohio. He said the temblor occurred in an area “that’s seismically very quiet.”

    The Indianapolis Star is reporting the quake was felt as far west as New Castle, Indiana, and that items shook off the shelf in Martinsville, located in northeast Indiana.”

    Meanwhile, here there be ice.  Out, out damned ice.  Be gone.  Snow we can deal with, but ice?  Four-wheel drive’s no good, just slipping and sliding out of control.  Skidding into the New Year may be some people’s idea of a good time, but not mine.

    Kate and I had plans to go to the Spectacle shop today and spend year end money left over in our pre-tax medical account.  Will have to wait till tomorrow.  When we go, I plan to get some up to date reading glasses and a new pair of driving glasses with the graduated lens.  Gonna stick with round lenses, not sure why but I’ve come to identify myself with them.  My correction is sort of odd in that I can read without glasses since I have offsetting problems, but now when my eyes get tired or I read a lot of small type, blurring occurs.  In the past, when that happened, I could put on my reading glasses to sharpen things up, but now they’re just enough off that they make things worse.  An aging body is such fun.

    We have a grand-dog in surgery today.  Solly, Jon and Jen’s youngest dog, has some kind of digestive tract problem.  He doesn’t eat and has become thinner and thinner.  Hope he comes out of that ok.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on the news Memories News of the Strange Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Yak Trax

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

    We have a sloping, long drive way.  Most days no big deal.  On days like today, when rain has fallen, then frozen, it requires special equipment:  yak trax.  They slip on over the shoe or boot and the rope like wire keeps you upright.  I bought a pair of these after going out for the paper one morning, not real long after my achilles repair.  My feet went up and I fell just like one of those cartoon characters, head smacking the driveway with no restraint.  Blood pulsing down my head I went inside, woke Kate up and said, “I think I need some help here.”  These days I slip on the yaktrax and walk with a grip to the mailbox.

    Kate called this morning from her quilt retreat bus, on her way to Eau Claire.  A truck pulling two trailers had upended near the spot of her call.  That part of Wisconsin can be treacherous in this kind of weather.  She said the bus driver had it handled.  I hope so.

    I’m going through an episodic pile reduction, pitching or filing paper of one kind or another that seemed important at one point in the past.  I always the feel when I finish.  Clarity.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Family Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Home and Heart

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    winter-solstice-08cbe2.jpg1  bar steep rise 30.42  WSW0   windchill 1  Winter

    Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

    Oh, man.  To get the trash out I had to blow the snow.  Underneath the snow is ice.  The snowblower with its knobby tires spun out and the only reason I stayed on my feet was the firm grip I had on the snowblower.  Never before had taking out the trash had a hint of danger to it.  Tonight it did.  After the snowblower and I went slip sliding away, I still had to roll both the trash containers down the long slope of our driveway.  Risky business.  Made it ok.

    In doing research for Homecomer I looked back over many of my sermons for Groveland and noticed that I’ve written several that deal with home as an idea.  Home has a certain poignancy for me, since my estrangement from my father and his subsequent marriage to a woman who made the problem worse.  The town and the house where I grew up seem faraway to me, as if the warm and comfortable feelings associated with home got eaten away by the acids of my family quarrel.

    The rightness or wrongness of it all has long been moot, yet the hollowness with which I’m left when it comes to home and nuclear family must have lead me to consider this theme.  It is a rich concept, one with so many layers and metaphorical possibilities that I have not tired of it.

    Perhaps out of this search of mine for home I’ll  find ideas useful to others.  The current environmental crisis both has its roots in and is made more intractable by our American sense of mobility, of looking over the next horizon for a new frontier.  This makes it hard to learn about the home that greets us each evening.  Well, more on that in Homecomer.

    The cold has come again and that will make the sleeping even better.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Memories Weather +Climate 📎and tagged