Tag: weather

Cold Advisory (It turns out this is as much a metaphor, here a warning, as a meteorological advising; keep reading this post at the peril of your good mood)

Such are the words in the bottom of my screen as I powered up my computer at 2:36AM EST. It is 10 degrees F right now here. Not bad in the scheme of weather the past couple of weeks. It is expected to fall back down below 0 degrees on Saturday and snow.

Weather ice-breaker over! Have you ever wondered who initiated using the term “ice-breaker” to get attendees at a meeting, a conference, a party comfortable with each other? Do you happily participate in these ice-breakers? I am always reticent. I am a person who enjoys solitude. Are these last two sentences I typed a guaranteed pairing? I was also going to ask, do people in, say, Florida “get” the term ice-breakers? But, yeah, they chop ice up for their cooling drinks. And, come to think of it, in the past week, a large portion of Floridians may have even stepped out to ice on their paths.

Brings me to this point to make–watch out, I’m in a bad mood. How bad? Well, if you don’t end up seeing this post, then it was a wretched mood, and I used the blog to air my densely felt mood and then deleted it. Would that the mood be so easily removable. If you do see this post, then perhaps the cup of cocoa that I made for myself did its job and the tone here lifts.

Hard to consider of late. There doesn’t seem to be much going on that lifts tones. Well, kind of lifted, I brought my snow shoes up from the basement and trekked out in my backyard (all 30′ by 12′ of it) and refilled the birdfeeders. Quite the adventure. Then I trod on some of my neighbors’ snow buried front yards. Not the sidewalks. We are a diligent neighborhood, everyone shoveled or snow blew their sidewalks beginning two seconds after the last snow flake of the storm. I am not complaining!! As I spend considerably more time walking surfaces with shoe-shoes as opposed to snowshoes, I am happy for the cleared sidewalks.

I am also, I want to say here, very happy for my neighbors who snowblew my sidewalk! And who regularly come along after each storm and do, at minimum, the end of my driveway, usually more than that. And who, in a day or two are going to Florida for a month, ah well. The sidewalk snow and I will just have to meet throughout February. I will shovel it, it will pile high. Such are the terms of agreement in snowy winters. We need the moisture!! We need it badly, more than do the immense and immensely hot and thirsty machine brains being constructed throughout the world to no good end other than to turn us into their minions. Do I sound paranoid? Or…?

As I say, this post may not see the light of day. However. My car did, so…

To take this photograph looking to the back of my house, I am standing with my back to the now cleared hood of my car. I’m pretty proud of my shoveling prowess. In case you hadn’t noticed.

There is so much that needs to be righted. You know, there always is. Yes, you know that. But there are levels of how righted things need to become. And the hole of errancy dug right now is deep and full. May we become how good we can be, love being that self, and share it.

Winter Weather

Hello

I am pretty sure I am in a better mood than when I wrote and posted my blog last time, which was last year now. I sit before my window watching the snow start again this early afternoon. Six hours almost to the minute that I watched it start this morning. At that time my phone weather app assured me that it was cloudy out and a “wintry mix” was not to begin until noon. That early morning snow lasted half an hour and left a good, solid, slippery dusting. I trod through it around mid-morning from my house to the river. Such a wonderful river. It flowed on this day silently, slowly. It carries a skim of ice along the edges, and no visible debris–always a gift from a river that traverses this city and many others along its not inconsiderable length from source to sea.

As I stood two seagulls, about 10 minutes apart flew northwest along the river route. Then 25 geese in a double V that shifted shape as I watched, front runners falling back, rear guard sliding forward, flew east turning, as they shape shifted, toward the northeast. I listened and, yes, thank you geese, they began a conversation among themselves. Then fell silent again. There was little other sound, if I inclined my attention upward. As I leveled my gaze again, I heard and then saw the everpresent vehicular cadences. If only we had not invented combustion engines and their unavoidable audibility, nor, now, for that matter, electric, which hum quite loudly. We would not, of course, have such long distance in short time spans mobility, but is that bad? Here is something to think about. Given our propensities–to imagine and then image every place we go in our own image–is it bad to limit our reach? I wonder.

I thought I’d include a cloudy sky. Can you see the layers of clouds, or do you see only the monochromaticity? Blink and look again. It was a moment of peace to watch up to it.

I must tell you that after it snowed this early morning, and as I walked back uphill from the river to the section of the city where I live, it warmed to a couple of degrees over freezing and the snow coat all disappeared. Then, it sleeted. Then is was still and the pavements everywhere returned to visibility from their early morning bright whiteness. And now, early afternoon, the second snow is falling–larger, distinctive shapes distinctly visible, and blanketing all within view. The dogwood out back and the birches out front are wearing attractive and increasingly lofty shawls. (BTW, my phone says it is 37 degrees and sleeting right now. It is NOT!)

Snow! not sleet.
Snow! not sleet.

So, these are today’s little mysteries.

“Whose woods these are
I think I know
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here…..”

I’m pretty sure anyone who has gone to school in the USA recognizes these lines as part of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” quoted here from memory, so I cannot vouch for the correct punctuation or stanza breaks.

Oil up your snow shoes!