• Tag Archives snow

  • Cozy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                Waning Blood Moon

    As the outside work wanes, the inside work increases.  This and that on the Sierra Club, getting ready for the upcoming legislative session.  Preparing multiple tours at the MIA while reading the fat Louvre catalog.  Keeping up with the blog. Getting ready for Kate’s surgery and recovery.

    This all dovetails nicely with the nesting instinct that always strikes when the first snowfall and cold snap hits.  It was a record snowfall for October 12th and the temperature remains low today.  Forecasts portend more snow.

    As I sat in my study yesterday working on the Asia tours, it felt snug, cozy.  The study has a small gas stove and I lit it, read object files and watched the snow come down.  A perfect day for a library rat like me.


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

  • Snow, Snow, Snow

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc        New Moon (Moon of Winds)

    The winds continue to blow, now driving a heavy snow.  The winds come straight out of the north with gusts ranging as high as 16 mph.

    I’m not going to either the MIA (Maya lecture) or the capitol (Clean Cars hearing) in favor of staying home and working on the blog while the snow piles up.  Sometimes the distance and a lack of four wheel drive add up to remaining in place.

    My energy level and my sense of well-being began to increase dramatically at the end of last week, either the end of a mild virus or the hangover from the vertigo/nausea fun of the previous week.  It feels so much better to feel so much better.

    In a bit I’m going to dive into Obama’s first budget message to congress.  I have it on a pdf file.


    📂This entry was posted in General 📎and tagged

  • Could Happen

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc   Waning Wild Moon

    Snow fell in the night.  Long ago I read a sociologist who thought about winter.  He said a good snow fall wipes out boundaries, makes the world seem more connected, more fluid.  It makes me wish snow could fall in, say Iraq and Iran, all over, maybe pushing up into Afghanistan and over to the rest of the ‘stans, maybe a vasty storm covering all the world in snow evening the beaches of Florida, Hawaii, Phuket.  Then, maybe then, we could all see how much we are one, how much barriers we’ve installed are false.  How our lives gather together huddled on this one small rock hurtling through the vacuum of space faster than a speeding bullet.  Could happen.

    Today I’m off to the museum again to learn about art historical research.  I can do it all right of course but I want to learn how to go deeper, dig more into the mountains rich with knowledge.


    📂This entry was posted in General 📎and tagged

  • Winter Happy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    7  rises 29.48  WNW2  wchill 5  Winter light snow

    Waxing Gibbous Wolf Moon

    The seeds for the 2009 vegetable garden sit on my desk beside me in piles according to growth habit:  viny, climbing, bushy, root or leafy.  When I get the chance, they’ll go in my homemade database with pertinent data and places to record germination, first bloom, first fruit and eventual production.  I’ve gardened for years, but never taken this much care.  Why now?  Not sure.

    Kate’s off to see the physiatrist in Elk River.  I hope he suggests some things that help her. She’s going to stop by Cottage Quilts on the way home.

    I’m off to the cities this morning to count ballots for the ex-com and see Michelle.  Michelle liked my first draft of the legislative updates, so it will go out Sunday evening.   Many more to follow.

    A light snow this morning, enough to make the outdoors beautiful and wintry.  This kind of winter makes me happy.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Garden Great Work Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • We Got Sizzle

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    24  rises 29.89  NNW0 wchill 24   Winter

    Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

    The Internet is a strange phenomenon.  It functions as a time machine, bringing the future just a bit before it arrives and churning the past as old acquaintances find you again through one of the search functions or social networking sites.

    It’s a good thing for me, because I was not such a good communicator before the web arrived.  I wrote a few letters, but I’ve never liked the phone much and the only reunions I ever attend are those of my high school.  Now though with Facebook,  Myspace and e-mail those old acquaintances are not forgot and often brought to mind.

    Wrote about three pages of a new Homecomer.  Much better.  I needed to make it a continuation of the first two pieces in the Heresy Moves West series.  I had conceived of them as a set from the beginning, but I hadn’t begun the other one as if it fit with them.

    We have some kind of frozen precipitation coming down right now, but I don’t what to call it.  Snert.  Sleeze.  Maybe sneeze?  Frozen drizzle is so uninteresting.  Fizzle?  Hey, I got it.  Sizzle.

    I bought two new snow shovels.  I have an unfortunate adventuresome spirit in the purchase of snow shovels.  This time I bought one of a kind I saw used on the U.P.  You figure they have 3 to 4 times the amount of snow we have, they must know something.  The other one has a blade made of a tough (I hope) plastic that won’t snag on the nails on our deck–at least that was my conclusion.  I may find out as soon as tomorrow morning.

    Just finished a lower body work out and aerobics. Tomorrow AM all morning I’ll write, then watch the vikings.  May Johnny Unitas have mercy on my soul.


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

  • Errands Before the Storm

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    18  steady 29.90  ENE7  wchill11  Winter

    Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

    Gotta run a couple of errands before the next snow storm.  Gas for the snowblower.  A new snowshovel.  Old one delaminated at the handle insertion point.  Hit the grocery store.  Then, continue writing on Homecomer.  Started off in one direction yesterday, got about three pages in and decided I needed to start over.  It happens.


    📂This entry was posted in Writing 📎and tagged

  • After the New Year, Backup

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    orchard-inwinter300.jpg-3  bar rises 30.00  SW0  windchill -3  Winter

    Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

    The Orchard in Winter

    2009 has well and truly begun.  The new year crept in on snow shoes, covered in a snowmobile suit and holding a cup of hot cocoa.  This was a Minnesota new year.

    We’ve had a cold winter so far and it looks like it’s going to continue for a while.  Somewhere around the end of January most of us begin to have fantasies of being somewhere else.  Many fantasize someplace warm, but I tend to go with just another location.  My escape this year may be to the UP or Ashland, Wisconsin.  Still gathering information for that Lake Superior book.

    Bill Schimdt suggested I back up this website onto my own computer since it hangs out in the cloud most of the time. I did that.  It was an interesting excursion into the bowels of the system.  It comes out in a form determined by mysql, the open source data base used by many servers.  The format is strange, made up of tables with columns of numbers.  They all make sense, once you begin to read carefully.  Anyhow, this is a once a month operation Bill suggests.  After I do it, then the regular backup I do every day will collect it and convey to my external hard disk.  I actually have two, but I still have to configure them the way I want.

    Today I start writing Homecomer.  Look for it to be posted on the Liberal Faith page sometime after January 11th.


    📂This entry was posted in GeekWorld Travel 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

  • Snow and Blowing Snow

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    12  bar steep rise  30.18  W9  windchill 5    Winter

    Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

    We have had snow and blowing snow most of the day.  Do not know how much right now, but the weather reports indicate as much as 6-10″.  That means snow blowing in the AM before Lois comes to clean the house.

    Maybe tonight.  Forgot the trash goes out tonight.  Hmmm.

    At 5:30 the webinar (new word I do not like much.  It feels clumsy.) on posting to the StarTribune weather blog set up.  Don’t imagine it will be too tough.

    Did my upper body resistance before the call.  Aerobics after.  Yesterday my pulse rate stayed higher longer than usual.  Hope that is not a trend.

    Still working on Homecomer, may start writing on New Year’s Day.


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