Equal Women

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It’s been so busy this year that Mother’s Day crept up on me.  We have a lot of spring birthdays in our extended family, and what with the weird weather this year and unexpected household expenses, it just kept slipping my mind.  I like to commemorate the day on this blog because I’ve considered myself a feminist for many years.  I’m very distraught that women still aren’t treated as equals to men.  This should’ve been a no-brainer over a century ago.  (Having an historian’s outlook, I realize that in the days when women tended to die young, in childbirth, it was difficult for many to rise to positions of social prominence.  Once we got to the stage that most women survived the experience, and then to the point that economics drove us to two-income families, the male-superiority charade should’ve been dropped.)  The fact is none of us would be here without our mothers.  Father’s day has never been a big deal for me, but Mother’s Day is important.

I did manage to remember to get my wife a card in advance, but this year the day itself kept slipping my mind.  Ironically, my wife and I had watched a biopic of Mother Ann Lee last night—I’ll post on that tomorrow—and it was only as I was preparing to write about it for today’s post that I thought, “Wait.  It’s Mother’s Day.”  (We do have plans for the day; I’m not a complete barbarian.)  My excuse is that we were set off yesterday by an early encounter with a brusque and condescending Verizon employee who would not help set up a new phone purchased elsewhere.  I hadn’t slept well the night before and it rained all day, none of which made for a productive Saturday.  The movie (tomorrow’s post) was longer than anticipated, keeping me up late.  Movies, strangely enough, are now starting to really influence my dreams.

My dream for today, however, is that women’s equality will become a reality rather than something we just keep talking about.  There can be little doubt that we’d be better off with a woman president than with the alternative.  A woman has traveled further from the earth than many billions of men have.  My doctor and dentist are both women.  They can do anything men in their professions can.  They are university presidents and CEOs.  Pilots, both civilian and military.  They are religious leaders.  And many of them do the job on top of being mothers.  I consider it a personal failing that it was only as I was about to post about Mother Ann Lee (tomorrow) that I finally realized today is a very important day.  Let’s make Mother’s Day count!

Snowballs in Spring

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Things snowball sometimes, even in the spring.  Weekends are among the most sacred of times when you work a 9-2-5.  They do double-duty as recovery time as well as prep time for the coming week to do it all over again.  I’m a proponent of the three-day weekend; life has grown so complicated that two days hardly cover it any more.  So in April I had a Saturday that snowballed.  I awoke vaguely thinking I might have to cut the grass.  It’d actually been dry a few days and the sun was out.  Then things started to get out of hand.  A letter arrived from the IRS.  Now, this is seldom welcome, but although it wasn’t scary it involved having to go back to our tax preparer’s office and, since tax day was just a couple days off, scheduling that was tricky.

Photo by benjamin lehman on Unsplash

Then the power went out.  Under a clear blue sky.  Being the middle of the day, we couldn’t tell if neighbors were affected or not.  After leaving a message with PPL, I walked to a local store about a block away and they had power.  The owner and I chatted a little, then I went home to await the PPL call or visit.  Since the power was out I was keeping a close eye on my phone’s battery level.  It was our only means of communication with the outside world.  Meanwhile, all of what we’d planned to do that Saturday had to be put on hold.  The house was quiet with no fridge hum or any other sound.  Suddenly I heard a kind of airplane buzz, but it seemed to be coming from inside.  I followed my ears to the kitchen where a big old bumblebee was trying to get outside.  I grabbed one of our ubiquitous peanut butter jars and waited for it to land.  The phone rang.  PPL said everything was fine on their end and we had to call an electrician.  It was now 4 p.m. on a Saturday, I was being buzzed by a bee, and I had to find an emergency electrician with my phone charge dropping.

I called a company I’d used before.  After explaining everything they decided they no longer serviced our area.  I called a second 24/7 electrician.  They could get someone out to us on Friday.  This was Saturday.  My wife took the jar from my hand and went after the bee.  The third company, which I will gladly use again, said they could get someone out by 9 p.m., at the latest.  By now the entire afternoon was gone.  My wife let the bee go outdoors and when we came back into the kitchen she said, “Isn’t that the fridge?”  It was humming.  Lights were out elsewhere so I made my fifth trip to the breaker box in the basement, using a flashlight, and tripped all the switches again.  Power was back on.  The electricians were good about canceling but suggested a follow up visit, just to check things out.  The grass didn’t get cut.  It was a snowball in April.

May’s Cool Start

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Beltane always makes me think of The Wicker Man, for some reason.  I recently got a royalty notice telling me sixteen copies had sold since the last statement.  (I never received that actual statement, but Worldcat shows that 419 libraries have a copy, making it my second best-selling book (maybe the best-selling; most royalty statements don’t include the total number sold, as much as authors would like to know that).  In any case, today is Beltane so I tip my hat to Sergeant Howie of the West Highland Constabulary and confess that I have two more books on the movie that have come out since I wrote mine that I haven’t read yet.  The reason is that I’m currently researching for a new book and Sleepy Hollow intervened.  But back to Summerisle.

The Wicker Man was a movie before its time.  The last of the three famous British films that spawned the sub-genre “folk horror,” it helped launch a new interest in ancient religions.  A friend pointed me to Children of the Stones (there will be a post on it in coming days), which was a British children’s television series with distinct folk horror undertones.  Maybe overtones.  It made me think of Wicker Man again.  And the way that folk horror has taken off in the past decade or two.  I’ve lost track of how many folk horror movies I’ve watched.  While discussing Christopher Lee with a friend lately, I was reminded how he once said that of the many movies he was in, The Wicker Man was the best.  It’s certainly a literate film.  Folk horror often tends to be.  Delving deep into what people (the folk) really believe can dredge up some very interesting possibilities.  I try to use them in my own horror writing.

Just because my book doesn’t explore the folk horror angle doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s not there.  (Sorry for the four-negative disclaimer.)  Devils Advocates at the time was looking for an approach that didn’t foreground folk horror.  Scholars tend to typecast Wicker Man.  I was working on a larger holiday horror project at the time—I may come back to it some day—and was surprised that nobody had approached the film from that angle.  The genre “horror” itself is a bit of a misnomer, and many of the sub-genres aren’t clearly defined.  For many people “horror” equates to “slasher,” but there’s a great deal more out there than that.  The Wicker Man stands witness to that on this somewhat cool May Day decades later.

Still Sleepy

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Being outside in the cold for several hours makes it difficult to think clearly.  That’s my official excuse for watching Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers.  I’d just come home from the Lehigh Valley Book Festival and was having trouble warming up.  I threw on the blankets and figured I’d watch a horror movie—I’d just been talking to people about horror films for a few hours, and I don’t want to be untrue to my calling.  When I opened my streaming app the first movie suggested was the sequel to the truly bad Sleepaway Camp.  My mind was too muddled to make a critical decision, so I clicked play.  Now, not all sequels are created equal.  This one has a different director, different actors, and a different direction.  And also, Bruce Springsteen’s younger sister Pamela is the lead.  Okay, so time to sleep away again.

The plot is pretty straightforward.  Angela, the killer from the first movie, has been rehabilitated and has changed her name.  She’s a camp counselor again.  And she has a fervor for high moral standards.  She’s also insane.  By the way, this straight-to-video, low-budget release was shot as a comedy without really trying to be scary.  It is still very campy, but it is handled more ably than the first film.  Angela, who kills only bad kids, at least at first, is a kind of “angel of death,” according to lore that has grown about her since the first film.  Her methods for killing are both derivative and somewhat inventive.  Just the kind of film to watch when your brain is frozen from being outside in unseasonably cold weather all day.

It did make me wonder about a few things.  Those who make movies like this earn, presumably, at least some money off of them.  At this stage in my life, anyway, the opposite has been true of the books I write.  Maybe I’ve found my tribe—those who put their creative efforts out there without big corporate backing, hoping someone will understand what they’re trying to do.  Some of us do.  I can’t recall how I first learned about this franchise (maybe my head hasn’t thawed out enough yet to remember; we’re having yet another unseasonably cold Saturday) but it did step in as an easy choice when I needed one.  This isn’t a scary movie, but if you’ve ever been a camp counselor (I was for three of my college summers) it may bring some nostalgia with it.  And it’s no Friday the 13th part two.

A Day for Earth

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Sometimes things come just when they’re needed.  Although it was earlier this month, the Artemis II mission was a celebration of Earth Day.  It was also a much needed shot in the arm during difficult times for the environment.  Human arrogance is quite often checked by nature.  The series of very hot April days followed by extraordinarily cold April days reminded us around here that nature is firmly in charge.  Our comfort, or expectations, are secondary to the vast world around us.  And we love our world for it.  We are guests here and we couldn’t survive without it.  We may set up a base on the moon or Mars, but such places will still rely on our home.  It helps that those who’ve ventured further away than humans have ever gone sent back photos to remind us of how small we are on a fairly small planet.  Pictures of home.

Photo credit: NASA, public domain, FD06_high priority pao

From our daily perspective it’s difficult to believe that outer space surrounds us.  We’re so caught up with our own little problems, generally of our own making.  I write this after a day of shivering in a chilly house as electricians replaced the breaker box and the conduit, from service head to basement mounting.  It was a sunny day but temperatures hadn’t really recovered after a nighttime low in the twenties.  I reflected on how much we’ve come to rely on being able to shut nature out.  How difficult it would be to survive without shelter, and a little heat.  With the electricity off the furnace didn’t know to kick on, and windows had to be open to snake wires through.  For all the wonders of a household electrical system, the Earth itself is so complex we are still only beginning to understand how it works.  We love it.  We fear it.

Our dependence on things we’ve constructed makes me feel fragile sometimes.  When we first noticed our electrical issues I walked to a local shop run by an Earth-loving owner to see if their power was out too.  “Water and electricity,” she said, “are the two things we can’t do without at home.”  She was correct.  We rely on the grid.  Nature could take us with both hands behind its back.  As the replacement process stretched beyond the scheduled finish time, I had visions of a cold night without power.  No way to cook dinner, no way to keep food safe in the fridge.  I thought of astronauts a quarter-million miles from home, protected by a shell made here on Earth.  And looking back to lovingly snap a photo for Earth Day.

Just Handle It

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It happened again.  A few days ago I loaded my blog post and forgot to click “publish.”  The reason for this is probably silly.  Although I get out of bed between 2 and 4 a.m., I’m afraid that if I post that early other notices will get on top of anything I share and the post will be overlooked.  Well, more overlooked than my posts already are.  So I wait until 6 a.m. to click.  And some days, particularly on weekends, I’ll have the post loaded but I’ll get distracted and will forget.  I discover it the next morning, stare at it in confusion for a while and then think, “I forgot to post this.”  I have this conversation with one of my brothers, near my age, who insists he needs a handler.  You forget to do things.  Most of the time I’m pretty good at remembering—this blog is the center-point of my online existence, and I post every day.  If I don’t forget.

Weekends are very busy.  Almost as busy as work days with their shorted human hours.  And last week was particularly intense.  Two unexpected house repairs that required financing.  Two birthdays.  And grass that loved the high summer weather we had in April.  (Our neighbor is trying to sell his house and I want to try to attract a new neighbor who appreciates those who make an effort.)  As soon as I stepped outside, however, I was overwhelmed.  During the week of summer weather I’d lost the long-term battle I’ve been waging against ivy that claims both fence and garage.  And sapling trees that somehow thrive in the shaded north end of the garage that hardly ever see the sun.  And I’m trying to teach, manually, a vine how to grow up a pergola that receives too much love from carpenter bees.  Why can’t it learn from the ivy just over there?  You get the picture.  (Right now it is just 29 degrees outside.)

By the time I came back inside, I was exhausted and forgot that I hadn’t clicked “publish.”  These days it gets light around six, and on work days I get delayed by jogging.  Still, I know the click before I start work for the day.  Weekends are the danger zone.  I could use a handler.  Or maybe I should just accept the 24/7 reality of the internet and publish as soon as I load the post.  Does it make any difference?  I don’t know.  Please direct all questions to my handler.

Row Your Boat

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I’ve long wondered about what appear to be coincidences.  Specifically, about movies on the same topic that seem to come out at around the same time.  I saw Gothic about a year after it was released in 1986.  In 1988 two other versions of the Shelley-Godwin-Byron-Polidori-Clairmont meeting came out.  I’ve already written about Haunted Summer.  The third of these films was a Spanish production, Rowing with the Wind.  It is the most poetic of the three.  The dialogue is often poetic and it pulls out several historical details—some of which the other two films leave out.  Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley decide to elope, taking Claire Clairmont with them.  Lord Byron does not wish to see them.  He and John Polidori, his physician are out on a boat.  Boats play a large part in this movie.  Byron, played by Hugh Grant, soon comes to like Shelley.  Polidori’s role is underplayed and he dies by suicide before the party leaves Villa Diodati.

Mary Shelley’s monster, however, follows them.  Back in England it leads both Mary’s sister Fanny and Shelley’s wife Harriet to suicide.  Extending beyond the summer of 1816, the film follows the Shelleys and Clairmont to Italy.  They have their children with them.  When they come to Venice, they once again meet Byron, but Mary’s monster kills William Shelley (their son) and Allegra (Claire’s daughter).  Obviously, death is a major theme, along with boats.  (Historically, all of these people died, but not in such close time, but close enough to be tragic.)  The Shelleys stay with Edward Williams, a friend Percy met in Italy.  The monster then leads to Shelley’s death by drowning.  Byron’s death in Greece somewhat later is narrated by Mary but not shown.

The film is framed with a fictional arctic journey by Mary to pursue her monster.  Interestingly enough, no mention is made of Polidori’s story “The Vampyre.”  There’s not even any suggestion that he set out to write it.  Movies of this meeting often point out how the vampire and Frankenstein became famous because of it.  Rowing with the Wind is an arthouse movie rather than a studio blockbuster.  It isn’t a bad story.  It tries to tap into the sorrows of Mary, and again, historically she did suffer loss.  Her mother died shortly after she was born.  A child died before the first visit to Byron.  Percy’s first wife Harriet and Mary’s stepsister Fanny both died by suicide in 1816.  William died in Italy, as did her third child with Shelley.  Polidori poisoned himself.  Allegra died at five.  Shelley drowned in a storm at sea.  Byron died while trying to fight in Greece.  This film is a fitting tribute.

Tambora Crisis

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The name Wolfgang Behringer was familiar to me from his book Witches and Witch-Hunts, which I read several years back.  I’ve been interested in volcanoes lately, and Tambora in particular.  So when I saw his Tambora and the Year without a Summer I decided to indulge.  What Behringer attempts here, as indicated by his subtitle, How a Volcano Plunged the World into Crisis, is a massive undertaking.  The result is a rather rambling history that covers many of the troubles of the early nineteenth century, which, ultimately, were influenced by the crisis triggered by Tambora.  For context, the eruption of Tambora in 1815, in what is now Indonesia, was the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history.  It famously led to “the year without a summer” in many parts of the world, but, as the book points out, the effects were uneven.  Western Europe was cold and wet.  North America was cold and dry.  Both of these situations led to famines and many people died.

Nature doesn’t play favorites, though. Weather is variable, and local.  Eastern Europe, and Russia, experienced nearly ideal conditions for agriculture.  There was enough food to go around, but what was lacking was the infrastructure.  Western Europe was still putting itself together after the disruption of Napoleon and his wars.  The Americans were still recovering from fighting off the British.  And, being German, Behringer spends a lot of time explaining what was happening in Germany.  Reading this kind of spurred me onto a little genealogy kick, since much of what he describes took place in the regions where my mother’s ancestors were from.  That’s why I try to read widely—it has a Gumpian outcome, sometimes.  

The inherent problem with a global history is that the world is simply too big, and human history too long and voluminous, to fit it all into one place.  There were no doubt many crises caused by the atmospheric changes to which Tambora contributed.  There were also many innovations.  Behringer makes a good case that the Tambora crisis led to the development of meteorology as we know it.  The regular and meticulous keeping of weather records began around then.  Savings banks also emerged.  As always, those who suffered the most from the famine were those who couldn’t afford food.  In response, governments encouraged people to save up for a rainy day (or year).  And the early development of life insurance, again to help people weather financial difficulties with the death of a wage earner, began.  More about the crisis than the volcano itself, this is nevertheless, a chilling examination of how one crisis can change history.

Easter Flowers

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Easter is our springtime holiday of hope.  Flowers are starting to bloom and the cold spells, when they come, don’t last too terribly long.  Of course, as a moveable feast Easter can come earlier than this, but here we are, in April with brave flowers making themselves vulnerable.  The weather’s fickle, as is typical of spring, with the lovely warm days often coinciding with when you have to be at work, reserving rain and chill for weekends.  Around here, anyway, it felt like winter lasted quite a long time.  It got cold early and was gray and gloomy for much of the time.  And for around here, we had a lot of snow.  Spring was reluctant to show up.  The timing of Easter was good this year.  The older I get, the more I appreciate the flowers.

As a kid, I appreciated the bright colors, but flowers were too delicate to play with and you could surprise a pollinator with a stinger, which seldom ended well.  As an adult I see that each flower is its own world.  For perennials, a resurrection.  Last year I somewhat clumsily dug up the daffodils that some previous owners had planted where nobody could see, and transplanted them in our attempts at a front garden.  Having already sprouted, they did not like that, and they withered and disappeared.  I hoped I hadn’t killed them.  This spring they showed up, reminding me that life is persistent.  It keeps trying.  That resurrection is possible.

We could spend a lifetime studying a flower and still not comprehend it all.  We see it for what it offers to us without thinking it exists for its own purposes.  All of nature interacts and we are connected, that flower and I.  We share the planet with insects for whom it is a source of life.  And other flowers with which it communicates in ways we can’t even understand.  We have to humble ourselves if we would let them be our teachers.  Our constant narrative of being on top of nature is misguided, you can almost hear them say.  There are riches here that money cannot buy and flowers would exist even without us being here to see them.  Nature carries on.  It urges us to acknowledge that we are part of it.  Easter is a holiday enfolded within hope, inseparable from its flowers.  They may be delicate but they are also wise.  We can learn from them.

Cool Book Festival

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So yesterday I was at the Lehigh Valley Book Festival.  (It occurs to me know that I should perhaps post such notices in advance, but I know few people in the area where I live.)  I was there displaying my books.  I have participated in the Easton Book Festival for at least four years now, but I had only recently learned about this event held in Bethlehem.  The weather was clear, but cold for an outdoor event that involves a lot of sitting—it put me in mind of having to put on gym shorts and tee-shirts to go outside one November in college to have the coach lecture us about football, with no moving or actual playing involved.  It turned out to be an endurance test.  Not quite of the Shackleton magnitude, but I am sensitive to cold and it was struggling to reach 40, and this on the 28th of March.  At least there was a cool breeze.

Several lovely people stopped to talk and showed some interest in my work.  I’m grateful to all of them.  As an author you often wonder if you really are alone in your interests.  Since my table was next to a run of three tables of children’s books—when those authors decided on an unauthorized move of their tables into the sun (we were on the shaded side of the building), they did not invite me to join them—I was a bit self-conscious.  Parents hurried their kids past my modest display.  I took a quick swing through the other stands and I think mine was the only one for adults.  Many people glanced and frowned as they walked by, but several people got it.  I know there are local horror fans out there, but I have trouble finding them.

The Lehigh Valley Book Festival isn’t huge and several people just happened upon it, asking why we were there.  It was held at the main branch of the library and it is fairly centrally located in town.  Also, there was a cherry blossom festival taking place on the other side of the library.  I couldn’t be certain but it seemed that many more people were headed for that.  And honestly, I’ve lived in this area for going on eight years and I just learned about the festival last fall.  And I’m a book guy.  Not too connected locally, I’ll admit.  There was enough interest that I might consider it again next year (if selected again).  Especially if the temperatures are back towards the seasonal norm.

Unexpected Thoughts

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The unexpected changes things.  We in the western world live under the false assumption of permanence.  We build something and it remains.  Well, any homeowner knows that constant maintenance is required, but still.  Then something unexpected happens and everything changes.  And it can be in the middle of a work week.  A death can lead to quick decisions and changes of a usual course of actions.  I wrote some funereal thoughts earlier, but a hastily planned drive all the way across Pennsylvania was organized just as a bomb cyclone hit our area.  We were thankfully spared feet of snow, but I had to deal with shoveling before driving early the next day.  After the funeral, a kind family member had invited us to her home, which we’d never visited before.  My wife and I drove there the night of the funeral.  The next day we had to cross the state of Pennsylvania again.  And then back to work on Thursday.

Something has fundamentally changed in my life, but still work expects the same Steve who was somewhat unexpectedly out of the office on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Thursday nothing has fundamentally changed at work, but in my life.  Even my usual morning routine feels off as thoughts constantly wander back to the intense previous two days.  And Monday’s stressful weather.  How the weekend before all plans had to be cancelled to, as the song goes, “let it snow.”  My mind, which operates largely on a routine schedule, has been shaken.  Jarred.  And yet, work persists.  Readjusting on a Thursday is difficult.  It’s as if I’d forgotten how things were usually done.  How did I use to sleep?  How did I use to drink so much water?  How did I jog before sunrise?  It was all routine last Friday.

Last Friday.  It was a work day, but I could jog.  The snow had melted.  We knew the drive was coming, but the weather painted a huge question mark over it.  It seems, this year, just when that illusory normalcy has once again been established, winter rudely intrudes.  Some Good Samaritan plowed all the sidewalks on our block on Monday, relieving a bit of the pressure.  But not the anxiety.  February in Pennsylvania is anything but predictable.  It is the poster child of change.  Back home on Thursday I was remembering how to jog on the streets—my usual trail still hasn’t melted—wishing this winter would finally end.  I reached our house where I noticed something where the snow had melted while we were gone.  The daffodils I transplanted last year were beginning to push through the soil.

Seasonal Horror

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It was a rare combination: Friday the 13th, Saturday Valentine’s Day, and Monday some federal holiday.  One of our first friends as a couple called unexpectedly on Friday to say she was in the area and that led to an impromptu meeting for a late supper at a diner.  Still, being Friday the 13th a horror movie was prescribed.  So I picked My Bloody Valentine.  I’ve seen it before, of course.  (I had a whole life before this blog, as witness this friend.)  But the confluence of Friday the 13th and Valentine’s Day forced me to realize that I’d never posted about it.  And the fact that Monday is Presidents Day made a horror movie mandatory, given the current denizen of the White House.  Back to My Bloody Valentine.  First of all, there was the question of which to watch.  The original from 1981?  Kids in high school were talking about this, but I didn’t watch it until several years later.  Then there was a reboot, My Bloody Valentine 3D, which wasn’t as highly rated, in 2009.  It nevertheless was well made and, it was streaming for free.  Spoilers follow.

I’d forgotten whodunit, so the movie kept me guessing.  Here’s how the story goes: a coal mine cave-in led Harry Warden to kill his fellow miners to preserve the air to survive.  He went into a coma, but after a year he awoke and massacred the hospital staff and kids partying at the mine on Valentines Day.  He was shot dead.  Ten years later, Tom, the son of the former mine owner, one of the kids at the fateful party, returns to town to sell the mine.  Instead, he becomes Harry Warden in his mind and begins killing again.  Viewers don’t know that it’s him since he wears a miner’s mask.  Suspicion is thrown on the sheriff, Axel, who was also one of the kids at the party.   And Tom and Axel are feuding over Sarah, now Axel’s wife, but formerly Tom’s girlfriend.  The movie effectively keeps you guessing whether Axel (who’s a philanderer) or Tom (who has mental problems) is the killer.

The movie has a Pennsylvania feel to it, having been filmed in my home state.  This is more in the industrial part where I grew up, rather than the Bucks County that features in M. Night Shyamalan movies.  The only thing they got wrong is that it doesn’t seem very cold for February.  (February can be a trickster in this state, with temperatures anywhere from the seventies to zero or below.)  It isn’t a bad horror offering.  The 3D effects are campy, but that only adds to the fun.  It was the right choice, given the confluence of red letter days.

The Storm

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I suppose it would be a fool’s errand to post today on anything other than the storm.  You know the one.  The snow/ice storm that has been affecting the greater part of the lower 48 for the last couple of days and is now set to target the most populous region of the country.  Power outages are expected (so if this blog goes utterly silent, you’ll know why).  Good thing FEMA has been dismantled by the Trump administration.  In any case, we’re all waiting to see what the outcome will be.  I guess we should ask AI.  In any case, our lives have become so completely tied to a constant source of electricity, we barely know how to get along without it.  I have to admit to being a bit puzzled myself.  Without electricity, the heat goes off.  The water pipes freeze up and burst, and a personal apocalypse ensues.

As my wife is fond of saying, the weather is still in charge.  A storm like this shows how fragile our infrastructure can be.  Especially since the last ten years of US history have been dealing with Trumpism or its aftermath.  And one thing that our elected officials don’t do well is deal with reality.  Nation-wide storms do occur.  Democrats do not control the weather.  The “woke” don’t have some great machine buried somewhere generating all the hot air that ultimately leads to global warming which, we all know, is really real.  And so we sit here waiting for the silence to come.  Funnily, having grown up in the Great Lakes snow belt, I remember these kinds of snow amounts not infrequently as a child.  Our house was little more than a shack and it was heated by a  single furnace in the living room, vented mainly by the leaky roof and drafty windows.  Besides, my step-father drove the borough snow plow.

Today things seem much more brittle.  What would we do without Netflix for a day?  And snow days from work are a thing of the past.  Offices never close because they never have to.  As long as the juice flows.  That is reality here in the world of 2026.  I can envision a different world.  One that might be a little more sane and focused on protecting one another instead of one percent of the richest one percent getting even richer.  A world in which snow is pretty instead of some insidious threat.  A world where being human is sufficient for the troubles of the day.

Stories in the Snow

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Birds are quite capable creatures, but some have learned that by hanging out around human dwellings, some of our species give handouts.  For me, the sight of a cute little junco shivering outside the window leads me to break up the hardened bread slices that I save for them and toss them outside when things are either buried in snow or ice.  This year we’ve had a bit of ice and some snow on top of it, which makes a kind of canvas for seeing who’s come to visit our crumbs.  My daughter pointed out to me that we had some feather prints as well as footprints, so I thought I should go ahead and record them.  If this were mud and a few million years had passed we’d perhaps have ended up with fossilized feathers.  And nature’s canvas is endlessly beautiful.

I imagine people tend to be partial to birds because they look so delicate and fragile.  Well, at least the little ones do.  Our natural sympathies make us feel sorry for them when nature makes finding food difficult.  The survivors among them, however, are tough.  Birds skirmish over food and can be quite aggressive around both a bird feeder or a crumb pile.  They were, after all, once dinosaurs.  And around here winter locked in before Christmas and has stayed around for quite some time, temperatures barely rising above freezing for many days in a row.  And I look for feather prints in the snow.  Try to find the beauty in the starkness of harsh weather (while looking askance at the energy bills).  Our animal companions can teach us much about life.  Their stories leave traces for us to follow.

Our species has often tried to advance itself at the expense of others.  I think of the tremendous environmental damage that we’re willing to inflict to enable AI.  What pollution we’re willing to dump out for using fossil fuels.  How much forest we cut down for our own use.  We drive vulnerable species extinct.  This makes me think of those creatures that have adapted to us.  Who speaks highly of rats, pigeons, or cockroaches?  Even sparrows, which can be quite aggressive, or even mean, reflect our attitudes toward the rest of nature.  I’m sure some sparrows come for the crumbs, even though I put them out with the juncos in mind.  Those that appear here in winter have likely migrated from even further north.  They handle cold I have difficulty tolerating.  And they leave art in the ephemeral snow.

Winter Jogging

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Keeping healthy can be hazardous to your health.  We recently had a rainstorm, followed by a snowstorm with several days not getting above freezing.  All of this made my usual jogging route impassible—ice under snow all on top of pea-gravel is a recipe for twisted ankles or broken arms.  I’ve had my fair share of spills while jogging but I’m at an age where my doctor asks me if I’ve had any falls in the past year, so I guessing it’s a bit more serious now.  But getting out to jog is difficult in such conditions.  A treadmill might be a solution.  We used to have one and I pretty much ran it into the ground.  I used it in inclement weather, but it was too much to move from New Jersey and besides, there’s nowhere in our house to put it.  Our basement ceiling is so low you have to stoop, and that doesn’t work for jogging.

After a few days of feeling dumpy, and when the weather got back up into the twenties, I decided to jog on the streets.  That’s one of the advantages to living in a smaller municipality.  There are a few cars out at first light, but not many.  And the streets are (mostly) cleared off.  I wasn’t sure this was the smartest thing to do, but when I greeted another jogger out doing the same thing, I felt validated.  The weather is still in charge.  I’ve been interested in the way the weather affects just about everything.  For example, this past summer I wanted to do a couple outdoors projects.  It rained nearly every weekend and then turned so hot that people my age were warned off of outdoor activity.  So much for mortal plans.

When autumn rolled around it turned cold rather quickly, forestalling any bigger projects beyond a massive amount of weeding.  And this is just on a personal level.  Deliveries are slowed.  Sometimes transportation hubs are shut down.  Bad weather for crops necessitates cooperative trading between nations (ahem).  We are at the mercy of the weather.  Tech giants are planning to go to Mars but they can only launch their rockets if the weather cooperates.  We’ve been messing with it because of global warming, and pretty much anyone who’s non-delusional knows climate change is real.  The sky is, after all, bigger than the earth.  So little problems, such as having to jog in the streets, seem less of an issue.  As long as it keeps us healthy.