Musings About Winter

The strange thing about winter is that it’s often a black and white world. It’s like living in a black and white movie. Take a photo of the outdoors with snow on the ground. Oh, the picture will have its shades of gray, but not much more. 

The green grass and blue sky of summer will not be there. Summer transitions into fall, and trees glow with fiery shades of red and orange and yellow. Then as autumn transitions into winter, the beautiful leaves of autumn fade into a dull brown and fall to the ground to litter streets and gutters and yards. The beautiful trees of autumn now appear lifeless, with their dark, naked limbs appearing stark against an often somber backdrop of gray sky. These are color photos, but you would hardly know it by looking at them.

The atmosphere is oppressive. No one really wants to go outside; it’s too cold, too uncomfortable, too dreary. We go outside in order to get to the next indoor destination we want to be. We go from indoors to indoors, with a short interlude outdoors. There will be no dalliance in the winter world, no pausing to admire its beauty.

And we dream about spring, when at last we can open the windows and welcome inside the outdoor air with its scent of spring, and see wildflowers blooming, and watch the trees turn green again, and the skies blue.

In his sonnet “Work Without Hope” Samuel Coleridge wrote:

And WINTER, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!

Mother Nature is beautiful, but without winter, would we appreciate her beauty as much?

Enough Already

The weather forecast says it might snow tomorrow. That will be fun, because I haven’t seen snow since – let me think – since the last time I looked outside. Despite two sunny days since the “blizzard,” there is still 10 inches of snow on the ground. Post Offices in the region are closed, so there has been no mail delivery for five days. Side streets are white and icy.

Days have been sunny since the storm ended, so some snow has melted and more will melt today, just in time for tomorrow’s storm.

I trudged up the street to visit friends. Walking on the icy street was treacherous. So I walked beside the street where the snow was still pristine, and it was easier to keep my footing, but walking in 10 inches of snow is work.

Later, I was in the kitchen cutting up veggies for a meal, and the television was turned on and a game show was airing. A contestant won a trip to Iceland, and she was very excited, jumping up and down and screaming. Because she won. A trip. To Iceland. Right. Iceland. You couldn’t pay me to go to Iceland. Or to any place with the word “ice” in its name. Though I’m sure it’s a nice place and the people are friendly. It’s just that the place sounds too, well … icy.

So I have to say, “Dear weather gods: enough already with the snow. Please let tomorrow’s storm bring only rain. Thanks in advance.”

Fancy That

I recently discovered that I’ve been using normal ketchup for years while all along I could have been using Fancy ketchup.

Knowing that Fancy ketchup exists, I started wondering about it, because wondering about stuff is what I do these days.

First, I wondered if Fancy ketchup looks any different from Normal ketchup. So I squirted a little Fancy ketchup from its fast-food packet onto a plate, then beside it I squirted a little Normal ketchup from a bottle in the fridge, and I made a visual comparison. They were both the same shade of dark red.

The Normal ketchup appeared a little bit watery. The Fancy did not appear separated. Good thing, too. Who wants to squirt colored water onto their french fries?

Then I wondered if Fancy ketchup was a real thing, or just a marketing ploy. Thanks to the Internet, I quickly found that Fancy ketchup is indeed a real thing. It is an official USDA grade of ketchup that indicates the best quality of ketchup. Ketchup can be grade A (US Fancy), grade B (US Extra Standard), or grade C (US Standard).

So there; one small mystery is solved. In my next post, I may tell you why Swiss cheese is called that, even though it’s not made in Switzerland. Or perhaps I won’t tell you. Life should have a little mystery.

Snowpocalypse

I learned one fact about the Universe many years ago: if I say that a certain outcome of some event is very likely, the Universe will put me in my place by making the opposite happen.

So naturally, a couple of hours after I published my previous blog post, in which I snarkily made fun of the puny “blizzard” my city had so far experienced, the Universe, or Reality, or the Supreme Being – whoever or whatever is running the weather machine in my neck of the woods – decided, once again, to put me in my place by turning up the volume knob on the snowmaker. It began snowing harder and the wind blew harder and soon the snowfall had become a proper blizzard. Meaning, it was snowing hard and mostly sideways.

I wanted to open the patio door at the back of my house and stick a measuring rod into the snow to check its depth, but the snow had drifted against the lower part of the sliding glass door. I knew if I slid the door open, there was a good chance I’d get a pile of snow inside the door. I’ll wait for the TV to tell me how much snow we got.

I opened the front door and looked outside. The bottom of the storm door is about 20 inches above the ground, and the snow in my front yard is level with the bottom of my door. In fact, the snow has intruded into the front porch, right up to the storm door. I can’t see the houses on the other side of the park across the street, meaning visibility is about a fifth of a mile.

Later, a man in a compact car – a front-wheel drive sedan – became stuck in the road in front of my house. I became aware of him because he was stomping the throttle – voom voom voom vooooom VOOOOOOM voom voom voom vooooom VOOOOOOM voom voom voom vooooom VOOOOOOM and the sound just went on and on. He tried going forward - voom voom voom vooooom VOOOOOOM – he tried going backward -voom voom voom vooooom VOOOOOOM – he turned the wheels left, he turned the wheels right, all to no avail. Obviously, there is ice under the snow. But after ten or fifteen minutes of spinning this way and that way, the wheels somehow got enough purchase on the road to pull the car out of the spot it was stuck in, and the car turned the corner and disappeared into the blizzard.

Tomorrow the sun will return and the landscape will be blindingly bright. People will be shoveling snow and trying to move their cars; some will have success, many will not. It may take a couple of days for a snowplow to push the snow on my street. But no complaints; I’m lucky. I have food, electricity, Internet, the house is warm, and there’s nowhere I have to go or be. That’s bound to change, but for now I’ll sit inside and watch the snowpocalyse.

And So It Ends

The Great Blizzard of 2016 came through and dropped a whopping 4 inches of snow on my city. People are trapped inside their homes. Drivers are afraid to venture onto the roads. Whatever shall we do? (Sarcasm.)

When I was a child, sometimes it snowed, and sometimes it snowed a lot. When I lived in the state capital many years ago, we had two snowfalls in the same week that totaled 27 inches. It was an unusual amount of snow for Richmond, but it wasn’t a big deal, it was just snow and you shoveled it out of the way and got on with your life. Snow didn’t take over the local TV channels, and it didn’t preempt the national news shows. It was just something that happened in winter.

You know what is a big deal? During the winter of 2014-2015, two snow storms in five days dumped five to seven feet of snow on Buffalo, New York. And those snow storms were only two out of ten to hit Buffalo that winter.

The weather people say that Washington, D.C. received two feet of snow, and New York City may also get that much. That’s newsworthy, I suppose. Very light snow is falling here, and maybe we’ll get another half inch before it’s all over. The local TV news coverage of the “snow event” consisted of reporters standing outside the television studio, describing how the snow was hitting their faces, poking a yardstick into the snow and announcing it was “two inches,” – a monotony which eventually descended into the tedium of showing photos of kids and dogs playing in the snow. That boredom finally gave way to different kind of boredom: college basketball.

And the tedium continues.

And So It Begins

11 AM: The Great Blizzard of 2016 arrived in central Virginia this morning. It will be a “36 hour event.” My city is near the southern edge of the snow zone. First there will be snow, then sleet and rain, then more snow.

It has been snowing a couple of hours and already the interstates are a mess. Side streets are white. As long as my house has electricity, I’ll be okay. So I sit and thumb my nose at the Great Blizzard. I mock the Great Blizzard. But, I have my fingers crossed that the Great Blizzard doesn’t shut down the electricity to my house. No electriciy means no heat. That would be a problem.

2 PM: The TV news reported that by 2 PM there had been 120 auto accidents across the state. The reporter didn’t say how many accidents usually occur on a Friday in January without snow. Therefore, 120 accidents could be a high number caused by people trying to drive in bad weather, or it could be a low number caused by people avoiding the roads because of bad weather. Telling us there have been 120 accidents is meaningless without context. So here’s some context. According to the Virginia DMV, there were 10,056 auto accidents in January, 2014 – an average of 324 per January day. For all of 2014 there were an average of 165 auto accidents on Fridays between the hours of midnight and 2 PM.

I’m staying off the roads, not because I can’t drive safely in snow; I’ve had to do that many times. I’m staying off the roads because I don’t trust those other drivers to drive safely in snow.

Eagles

Glenn Frey died today at age 67. He was a guitarist for the 1970s rock band the Eagles. He wrote several of the band’s hits but my favorite Eagles song is one he didn’t write. Peaceful Easy Feeling was written by singer-songwriter Jack Tempchin. The Eagles covered it on their debut album and it reached number 22 on the Hot 100. The song is also the tune playing in the Dude’s cab in The Big Lebowski. When he complained that he “hates the fucking Eagles” the cabbie threw him out.

The song of the day is Peaceful Easy Feeling from the 1972 album Eagles by the Eagles (Frey insisted the band’s name was simply Eagles, not “the Eagles”). The “eagle head” in the video is a painted human hand.

The Winter Hawk

By the time I returned from the store, bright sunshine had warmed the air to forty degrees. As I struggled to close the patio door while carrying 4 bags of groceries, I happened to glance skyward and saw a lone hawk soaring high above in a cobalt-blue sky. “The winter hawk,” I instantly thought. Sailing, wheeling, wings spread wide and motionless, he was a feathered glider coasting from thermal to thermal. I imagined him looking down on his domain. What he was looking for I didn’t know. Food, perhaps – I’ve seen wild rabbits and opossums near my house, and there is certainly no shortage of squirrels.

I’ve seen the winter hawk before, many times. I’ve seen it sailing below rooftops, gliding past me a stone’s throw away. One day I walked down to the river and took photos of the winter landscape. Upon examining the photos, I noticed one in which the hawk was perched high upon a bare, leafless tree limb, looking over the river, looking in my direction. Was it the same hawk? Perhaps it’s keeping an eye on me. In folklore, witches had familiars – animal guides – that were believed to be supernatural beings that could assist them in their practice of magic. Native Americans had their spirit animals that acted as guides, messengers, or protectors. I wonder if my hawk … but I let the thought drop.

Hawks migrate in fall and spring. My hawk is a winter hawk. When spring approaches he’ll take his leave and I won’t see him again until there is a chill in the air and autumn leaves begin to fall. Then, I’ll see him when winter arrives. I always do.

Oh Wonder

The song of the day is All We Do from the 2015 album Oh Wonder by English pop duo Oh Wonder (Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West).

Winter Weight

Every year as winter approaches, I gain weight. From the first of October to the end of November, I put on about 15 pounds. First, I get hungry. I begin to crave carbs: pizza, bread, pasta, and anything in a bun. The extra weight takes the form of extra fat around my middle. When spring comes, I lose the extra weight.

I feel like I’m part squirrel. Squirrels do the same thing: as winter approaches, they will increase their fat reserves by up to a quarter of their body weight to help keep them warm during the coldest months.

Because their bodies are increasing their fat reserves, naturally squirrels will be eating more food. But what will happen if, as winter approaches, you put the squirrel in a cage and refuse to increase his available food? Scientists have done that. What happens is, the squirrel will still increase his fat reserves, but he will break down muscle mass and internal organs in order to create the additional fat. The winter squirrel doesn’t get fatter because it eats more. Rather, it eats more because it is getting fatter.

I’m fairly sure my body is doing the same thing. Let me be clear: I don’t like to overeat – I only do it because my body makes me. So there. No guilt. Pass me that bowl of nuts, please.

Power Out

I rolled out of bed at 6:30 AM and looked at the thermometer. It said 18°F. By noon the temperature had climbed to 27°. At noon, I was on a Skype session with CD when everything stopped. The electricity had gone off. This wasn’t just an inconvenience; my home requires electricity in order to have heat. The house would be in cool-down mode until the power came back on.

I called the power company to report the outage. They said they hoped to have the power back on by 5 PM. Hmm … 5 hours without heat in below-freezing weather. I showered while I still had hot water in the water heater. I dressed and decided to drive to Wally World to pick up groceries. As I walked out the front door, it occurred to me that the garage door opener would not function without electricity. Oy.

I entered the garage and squeezed between the back end of my Jeep and the garage door. I was barely able to reach the manual release cord and disengage the big door from the chain drive. I walked back out of the garage and around it to the outside of the garage door and raised the big door manually. Now that it was disengaged from the chain drive there was nothing to hold the door in place and it wanted to close again from gravity. I used a 1” by 1” jammed  between the garage floor and the door to hold it open.

I backed the Jeep out of the garage, stopped, got out, removed the prop that was holding the door open. I drove to Wally World. All the traffic lights on the way were dark. Police directed traffic at some intersections. At other intersections, including a major one, no one directed traffic. I approached and stopped, then nosed my Jeep into and through the intersection.

Wally World had electricity. I shopped. I paid for my purchases. I drove home. Traffic lights were still out. But when I entered my house, it was warm, and I heard the boiler in the cellar running. I had electricity.

It was good to be on the grid again.

Angus Powell

The song of the day is Monsters from the 2012 EP Monsters by Welsh singer-songwriter and musician Angus Powell.