Enough!

Your Bloguero just got the text message from CodeRed. It warns of yet another winter storm, more than a foot of snow, extreme cold, and yadda yadda. This idea arrived embedded in the text: maybe this is the last big winter storm for this season? And maybe the next thing is crocuses.

Here's hoping.

A Winter's Tale

‘Tis the season.

Your Bloguero left work early today because it was snowing hard, the roads were already slick,it was getting dark, and soon the roads would be impassable.Two obstacles to the trek.First, your Bloguero in a moment of supreme distraction dropped his car keys in the deep, fresh snow. He searched his tracks but could not find them. Thoughts of hitching a ride home for the spare keys and returning for the car. Or maybe staying home and hitching a ride back in the morning. Who to call? Better to search more thoroughly. Better to continue searching. Hence, a painstaking search, with your Bloguero distracted by this: a few years ago he dropped a mailbox key in the snow in the driveway and lost it. He could not find it. He had to wait four months for the snow to melt before it reappeared. Was this the sequel? He sighed. Better to keep searching. At long last, your Bloguero discovered a small hole in the fresh snow, and at its bottom he found the car keys. Crisis averted. Time at last to drive the snow covered road.

Obstacle two. In Eastern New York the weather is beastly. It snows a lot. The temperatures get so cold that car seats make a distinctive “crunk” sound when you sit on them. And when you then turn the key, the engine makes a single metallic sound, “Sput.” It does not start. Then there is silence. The silence of deep snow and zero degrees and an anemic blue sun. You sit in the driver seat, your breath rapidly fogging the inside of the window with ice. Best to give up. Your Bloguero knows this is a common experience. Too cold to start. You’d think with such a harsh, unforgiving teacher everyone in Eastern New York would learn about winter. Wrong.

On today’s after work commute, usually 20 uneventful minutes on two lane blacktop Routes 9-H and 66 and County 9 and Route 203 filled with the hushed sound of NPR, your Bloguero drove at less than 18 miles per hour behind a minivan with tires too bald to go up or down the snowy hills safely. This cautious citizen created a long string of impatient cars and wallowing trucks that crept dangerously close to each other on every up and down for miles. As time elapsed, the string grew longer and longer, the bright lights coruscating, an impatient, floating, halogen and mercury constellation, aimed for the North Star. Your Bloguero eventually arrived at his destination.

Your Bloguero is not dismayed by inclemency. The shortest day of the year is coming. The Holidays. Some vacation time, if you are lucky. Your Bloguero has said it before and it bears repeating: days like today are demonstrations of the reasons why so many farmers left here as soon as they could and headed for more temperate climes. It’s this very kind of unremitting, beastly weather that forged America’s 18th century history and the drive West.

May your Winter be kind, and may you and your loved ones be warm.

Ice Station Zebra, New York

We awoke to minus 4 degrees F. And a wind chill in the minus double digits. Today's high will be in the teens, and tonight will again be negative. Winter waited in Eastern New York and Western New England until mid-January to arrive. And now it's here. Unfortunately, the bitter cold evoked thoughts of Ice Station Zebra. What a terrible movie.

Why did this come up? Is this Winter now somehow like the isolation of floating around the Arctic on an iceberg? No, not yet. We should inquire about this again in about 60 days, when cabin fever has had a chance to incubate and the isolation has set in in earnest. Is this somehow like Ice Station Zebra, a movie Roger Ebert said was "so flat and conventional that its three moments of interest are an embarrassment"? No. We have to give wintry boredom a chance to fester and grow. Give it time. Get into the stretch of winter after the Stupid Bowl. The stretch of winter that's like a two lane highway across the Arctic. Maybe the thought is just a reason to check out episode 11 of season 3 of Breaking Bad, in which a check from Ice Station Zebra Associates makes a brief cameo. I don't know. I do know that this is clearly Winter thinking. Inconclusive. Speculative. Slow. Untethered.

One thing remains clear. Winter grows introspection. Silence. Wonder. Curiosity. Creativity. There really is time. Every minute seems to have its full compliment of seconds. The weather has truly slowed everything down. Or slowed everything up. We'd like to grow some blubber. We'd like to hibernate. We'd like to get closer to the fire. For all of this I am grateful. And I am thankful for warm, secure shelter.

Wintry Mix

Here he goes again. “Listen here, boy. When I was little, it used to get cold around here. How cold? Don’t give me that look, boy. I’ll tell you how cold. It was so cold you would split logs using just a hammer. It was that cold. You’d hit the log once with the hammer, and it would go 'pop' and jump into pieces. It’d splinter. That’s cold, all right. I’d run out there and break up a bunch of wood with just a hammer. That was my job. And I didn’t even have gloves back then. You know how cold that was? Gimme that bottle.

"And I'm not even gonna tell you about my old man, and what he was like. No. No, sir. Not gonna talk about him at all."

It was the second or third month of cabin fever season. Him sitting unshaven on the couch in a frayed t-shirt with a captive audience. Me. The bottle nearby. The ashtrays overflowing. The stove pumping out its dry heat. The console TV flickering with nobody watching. And a view through the small, frosty windows of large, unpleasant things falling from the sky into fields already covered with deep snow: some ball bearings, sleet, ice cubes, plaid Barcaloungers, pointy scrap metal, old weather satellites. At first having school called off was OK. I hated school. After a month, it wasn’t so great. There was nowhere to go. Everywhere there was waist deep snow with a thick turquoise Formica crust. Furniture and space debris and hardware falling from the sky. Roads like an unfenced luge course. Winds screaming and shaking the house. The dimmest of yellow light in the early afternoon. And him.

There are now 67 days until Spring. And today there is wintry mix.

Winter Haikus

1.

Last winter's haikus
were hiding in my notebook.
That was not much fun.

12/7/11

2.

4 am awake.
Darkest night, winter's silence.
Dreams tip toe away.

1/5/12

3.

Three squabbling crows fly.
What's the argument about?
No one remembers.

1/8/12

Storm Central?

There's one thing I haven't heard lately. "Well, when I was a kid, the winter was much worse than this." It's not that nobody's saying that. No. It's that it's impossible to get out, and there's nobody here who would dare to say that aloud. Especially with the Internet. You could look it up and find out that it wasn't really any different. Or you could not look it up and instead spend a few hours testily arguing about it. Arguing is more in line with the onset of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), cabin fever, grumpiness, and that exquisite soreness that comes from shoveling snow. Arguing is an inevitable indoor Winter activity.

Hopefully the storms that have turned Columbia County, New York into a pale model of the Northwest Territories will end tonight.

Meanwhile, there is an element of the surreal to be noted in passing. WAMC, the public radio station, started a fund raiser on Monday. Because it has zillions of transmitters all over this part of the world, and because there's virtually no public money for public radio, they're trying to raise $1 Million. One Million Dollars. Reminds me of Mini Me. This is a lot of money. And they have their tactics for raising it. The result is that the listener doesn't know when they will play the news or the weather. You tune in, thinking you'll hear about what you want to know about, the storm or about Egypt. Instead, you're treated to a feast of passive aggressive obnoxiousness designed to make you pay up or turn the radio off: yodeling yesterday, today the gong from Law and Order is rung after each and every donation is announced. Pardon me. I gave money to the station yesterday. But I cannot listen to this any more.

Ironically, to keep the station on the air so that it could report events for which radio is helpful, like terrible weather, like rapidly unfolding world events in Egypt and the like, I have to listen to incessant yodeling and the gong. It is not avoidable. Nobody is telling what the schedule is, nobody reveals when there will be a program instead of the fund raiser, so I find myself hoping beyond hope that there will be a break from the fund raising sturm and drang to bring that most precious commodity, information. Alas. I cannot listen and wait. Last night, I listened to this nonsense for more than forty minutes, only to have the break be financial news. Not Egypt. Not the storm. Do not ask me why I let it go on for that long. It's winter. I made bad decisions. Shoot me, please.

Back on November 6, 2010, I complained about this. I wasn't charitable:

We do have a public radio station to keep us company. But it seems to have only two programs. Prairie Home Companion, which it seems to play on a loop throughout the weekend, and Fundraising, which plays during the week. The station tries to raise $800,000 per fund drive. That is a huge amount of money. And there’s also commentary. Unfortunately, it seems there is only one commentator. And he’s on all the time, expressing his opinion or raising money or both. My opinion? Let me try to remember the last time any sane person asked for that. It seems the radio station has decided to have millions of transmitters and only 3 programs. This is a recipe for seasonal insanity, if not depression.

All right. I want to amend my remarks. At the time I wrote them, I admit they seemed unnecessarily grumpy. As fate would have it, they weren't. Not at all. The station is now locked in what I think is will turn into a perpetual fund raiser. And it is impossible to listen to the station. This will continue until the Equinox. Or longer. Or forever.

My radio is off. It may stay off. I'm getting information about Egypt from Al Jazeera's live stream and the weather from the weather sites. This could be habit forming, because it is so incredibly easy. I suspect that WAMC, which has been an asset to this community for so long, because of the timing and amount of this particular fund drive, may have consigned itself to history. Like those big snow storms nobody around here is talking about.

Its only hope is that eventually we'll be able to drive again. WAMC, if it's saved at all, will be rescued by car radios.

Winter: The Sloth

Yes, sloths. A perfect winter archetype. About their name:

The sloth's taxonomic suborder is Folivora, while some call it Phyllophaga. Both names mean "leaf-eaters"; derived from Latin and Greek respectively. Names for the animals used by tribes in Ecuador include Ritto, Rit and Ridette, mostly forms of the word "sleep", "eat" and "dirty" from Tagaeri tribe of Huaorani. In Brazil, sloths are commonly called "Bicho-preguiça" ("lazy animal") because of slow movements related to their very low metabolism.

So that's your winter archetype: sleep, eat, don't bathe, move very, very slowly. Deliberate very, very deeply before moving a single muscle. Don't move at all if possible to do so. Be lazy. Be slow. Be still. Wait with exceeding patience, if not resignation for Spring.

Goodness, even the seeds lying in the earth aren't stirring with all that snow lying thick on the ground over them.

The part of you that faces the fire is warm; the part that is away is freezing. Turn around very, very slowly, as if you were cooking like shawarma.

Don't just do something. Focus on doing absolutely nothing, the bare minimum to sustain life until the Equinox.

Coldest Night Of This Year (So Far)

There is a reason in history why colonial settlers in Eastern New York and Western New England packed up their families and all of their possessions, tied their livestock to a wagon and headed toward the setting sun. Yeah, it may have had something to do with soil depletion from bad farming practices. Or a sense of compelling adventure. But if you go out this evening, you'll figure out the western expansion and Manifest Destiny in about 3 minutes. Or less. Because in those demonstrative 3 minutes, your face will start to freeze, and your toes will begin to freeze, and your breath will seem inadequate, and you will find yourself hurrying to get back to whatever warmth you can find. Somewhere. Anywhere.

While you're running to the hearth, you can think briefly about descriptions of snow by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Or Max Frisch. Or Ole Rolvaag. Or Willa Cather. And you can think about how the Mohawk and the Iroquois and the other tribes that lived around here in large numbers knew something about cold and how to endure it, but that evidently they didn't tell that to the European invaders. No. They probably figured out that these pale, weak seeming people would eventually have to move elsewhere because they weren't cut out to stay, they weren't rugged enough to thrive here. Those Mohawks were right. Absolutely right. I'm not rugged enough to thrive here. They, however, just didn't count on how many people were going to arrive. And how many of these arrivals would be morons, or would decide for incomprehensible reasons including inertia to stay and try to do battle with the elements. They didn't figure that the Europeans when all was said and done were idiots.

Tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday night the forecast here is for -10 each night. Fahrenheit. Not Celsius. Fahrenheit. This is a temperature at which people and machines break down. And they break down quickly. You don't dare cry, because your tears will freeze on your face. This is a temperature at which sane persons-- I consider myself one of them-- contemplate leaving for Mexico or St. Lucia, basking under coco palms, snorkeling in Bahia Soliman, and, in general, concoct elaborate plans for escape to a warm places. Put another way, there is no reason why sane people should experience this kind of cold. And I regret that I will experience it in all its majesty if I leave this house this weekend.

Tonight is, as W.C. Fields so aptly put it, Not A Fit Night For Man Or Beast. Tomorrow and Sunday, ditto.

Stay warm. Be well.

Snow Day

There is a ton of snow today. The official NOAA prediction was for 6 to 16 inches. I think we've exceeded that. By a quite lot. And it's still coming down. And blowing. And there seem to be "white outs."

Everything is canceled. If it weren't, you couldn't get there anyway. Route 203, a state highway maintained by the New York State DoT, as I write this, is a snowmobile track running down the middle of the roadway. The few trucks crawling cautiously down the road straddle the middle line. And go very, very slowly. If you wanted to, you could cross-country ski down the middle of this road into town. But why would you do that? The general store closed two months ago. So there's nowhere to stop for coffee. Or hot chocolate. Or anything else.

The snow is great for skiing. You could go skiing, if you could get to the slopes. But, of course, you can't because that requires the use of the roads. So today is a Snow Day. A stay at home day. A fire in the fireplace day. A why won't the dog and cat go out day. A maybe I'll just go back to bed with a book day.

Later, when the snow has stopped and the State has plowed the roads, we will all try to figure out how to move that mountain at the side of the road that blocks entry to and from the driveway. We will wish we had a front loader. We will wish we had a snow blower. We will break the handles on our analog snow shovels. We will talk about how we deserve to be sitting at the turquoise sea.

If you want to understand the growth of the 18th Century United States from the Eastern Seaboard to the interior of this continent, you just look out the window. It doesn't snow like this in England or Holland. This kind of snow, this kind of Nor'easter, is unbelievable. The movement West may have had something to do with the depletion of farmland caused by growing the same crops over and over again, but it was also the weather. Definitely. I cannot imagine this without central heating. I cannot imagine this in an uninsulated log cabin. It's enough to make you pack up all of your family and possessions and head for the setting sun at the first available chance, driving due southwest.

Stay warm, be safe, enjoy.

Haiku

You came while I slept,
Gently woke me, left a gift.
The silence of snow.

How Long, How Much Longer, How Long?

The NY Times warns:

The National Weather Service predicted about a foot of snow for New York City overnight, with the heaviest snowfall starting at 9 p.m. and continuing until 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. Monday. Periods of snow were likely to continue throughout Monday afternoon....snip

The looming storm has sent the city scurrying to prepare....snip

New York City-area courts planned to remain open Monday, but thousands of new jurors were told not to report for duty in New York, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess and Orange counties, said David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state office of Court Administration.The jurors hearing pending cases may come to court if the judge orders, he said... snip

“A foot of snow is significant and will cause significant travel problems late tonight and into tomorrow morning,” said Michael Silva, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton, N.Y.

Doh. "Significant travel problems" is bureaucratic talk for forget about going anywhere on Monday. But I have a question about this winter. Actually, legendary bluesman Leroy Carr had the question, though he wasn't asking it about winter, "How long, baby, how much more longer, how long?":



Sorry for ultra boring video, but you get the idea.

Reason # 567 To Visit The Caribbean

Really it's simple. When I turned on the computer this morning, there was a red weather alert on the screen. Today is February 21, 2009, so I wasn't surprised to read this:

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN ALBANY HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WATCH...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM SUNDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH MONDAY MORNING FOR THE SOUTHERN ADIRONDACKS...THE LAKE GEORGE SARATOGA REGION...SOUTHERN VERMONT...THE BERKSHIRES...AND TACONICS.

THE POTENTIAL FOR SIGNIFICANT SNOWFALL EXISTS FROM SUNDAY THROUGH MONDAY MORNING ACROSS THE WATCH AREA. THE SNOW IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP LATE TONIGHT...AND BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES SUNDAY AFTERNOON INTO SUNDAY NIGHT. THE SNOW SHOULD THEN TAPER TO SNOW SHOWERS BY MIDDAY MONDAY. AT THIS TIME...THE POTENTIAL EXISTS FOR 7 OR MORE INCHES OF SNOWFALL ACROSS THE WATCH AREA.

I think the National Weather Service still uses all caps because it doesn't know that we no longer use teletype machines. And that the Internet isn't an upgrade to a teletype. But I digress. It's already been a cold, bitter winter, and now, just when there is the slightest hint of the scent of spring on the air, this warning. I am not happy with this. There remains a snow cover on the ground; it's been there since December. And now it will again thicken.

Which brings me to reason #567. That would be the combination of the above warning and this:



What are you waiting for?

Why The Mayan Riviera Beckons

Nah Yaxche, on the beach in Bahia Soliman, near Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Tonight the weather forecast in the Northeast US is for yet another big storm. This time we're expecting more than 10" of snow. We've already had 3 storms this winter of more than 6". We've already had an ice storm that knocked down trees and wires, leaving thousands of people without electric power, some for up to a week. Yesterday morning, it was -4F. On Saturday the wind chill was -30F. This morning it is a glorious 3F. Even the cats and dogs don't want to be outside. Long story short: I have to be crazy to stay here. I can understand thoroughly why the pioneers after checking out New England and Eastern New York for a few decades immediately and deliberately started moving to the south and west. They were looking for something, all right. They were looking for a place where you could leave your car outside and not have to spend 10 minutes scraping the ice off your windshield. They were just trying to escape.

And so, this would be a really great time to head to the Mayan Riviera of Mexico. The temperature today and everyday this week there will be in the mid-80's F. The sun is shining. You can see the beach in Akumal right here on a web cam. Look out your window. Now look at the image on your screen. Compare. You tell me which seems better.

Our house in Bahia Soliman is renting for a 5-day window in early February at a ridiculously low, reduced rental. You can take advantage of this. Just fly to Cancun (airfare is inexpensive), rent a car (ditto), and get away from Winter for a few days. Soliman Bay is absolutely paradise. And the peso, instead of being 10 to the dollar is now about 13, so everything seems to be 25%+ cheaper once you arrive.

What are you waiting for? Buen viaje.

2008 Ends With Snow

Just as it began. With two crows in the tree. And snow. Plenty of snow.

May you have a joyful, prosperous and healthy New Year!