Skiving Off on a Slightly Snowy Day

I woke up with a bit of a headache today -- perhaps because I stayed up too late finishing a book -- and the real blogging today will take place at my other blog, Queuing Up, where I'm still trying to catch up on my movie reviews. But, for your looking pleasure, here is a picture of what I saw when I opened the blinds in my "office" this morning, and a little mood music:

Coming in Like a Lion

Here we go again! The snow started, as predicted, about 10 pm last night. At the time, I was trudging around the house trying to corral the dog. Rusty "escaped" when I fell in the snow. Fortunately, he was so interested in smelling the snow around the house (it had been a sunny day and squirrels were out) and looking through the basement windows to see the cat, that I was eventually able to lure him with a treat and grab his leash again.

It's still coming down; somewhere between 4 and 8 inches are predicted, but on the actual coastline and offshore islands there may be rain instead. Onkel Hankie Pants' performance this evening in Twelve Angry Men and Women has already been cancelled. After years of living in a major metropolitan area, it's almost culture shock to live where winter weather cancellations are so common. In City of Lakes, snow days were a rare occurrence; a former Governor who was born in New Jersey got a lot of kidding when he cancelled school for the whole state twice in one season because of extreme cold. When the girls went to Rudy Perpich's Good Idea (aka High School for the Terminally Artistic), there were more cancellations because many of the metro-area students drove long distances to school. Our kids usually listened wistfully to the long list of school cancellations and "two hours late, no morning kindergarten" announcements from the more rural areas of Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Church was never, ever cancelled, although once we cancelled the Christmas caroling party. But here, where many people have to wait for their driveways to be plowed out before they can even think of getting on the road, cancellations and postponements are a way of life in winter. "Life in the slow lane" is one of our t-shirt slogans; the constant reminders that we are not fully in charge, that we must pay attention to the weather and that human plans must sometimes be cancelled because of it, may have something to do with that. It's humbling.

My daily email update from the Washington Post this morning mentioned that "meteorological winter" is officially over. That's not just in the DC area, but here as well. The ten-day forecast has a lot of temperatures in the low 40s and no further snowstorms, just some "wintry mix." There is the old saw about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb, and the record high for March 31 here is 73 degrees F. It could happen again! I hope so. We are all getting tired of this. Here are some more photos I took out the front door this morning:




Get out the brushes and scrapers! We are so fortunate to have a garage (with an automatic door opener! connected to the basement!), which we pretty much lived without for all the years in Minnesota. Our apartment-dwelling neighbors are not so lucky.








This photo is of a few branches from our Christmas tree that remained on the (unused) front steps. Those steps were almost clear yesterday, but here they are being covered with snow again. This was taken about 2 hours ago, and you can hardly see these now for the snow. I am sorry to say that the trees and the parts we cut off are also still in the yard -- bad weather and procrastination made us miss the town pickup. No matter, OHP will saw them up after the snow goes and take them back to our woods to make humus.

It's not a good day to drive to Orr's Island for the church breakfast, so I'd better start cooking if I want there to be any. OHP is busy sending out our Valentine letters, which replace the 2007 Christmas letters we didn't get done. What's your weather like today?

Enough, already!

Remember the other day I said we had had 76+ inches of snow this season? Well, it's probably closing in on 7 feet now. Of course, some of it melted during our January thaw. But here are some pictures of the scene that greeted us this morning, for those of you in snowless climes. The one on the right is the view from our front door at about 7:00 am. Yes, those are the lions, nearly covered in snow.


Here is a more expansive picture of the view from the
front door. If you click to enlarge it, it appears a snowblower is being used near the car in the parking lot of the apartment building across the street. (My sister checked into it and a 2 bedroom apartment goes for $850 a month; I'd guess maybe heat is included.) You can also see the many overhead power lines. Much has been made recently here of the 10th anniversary of the Great Ice Storm of 1998, when many people were without power for up to 9 days or more. Today we probably will not have quite such a disaster, but outages are being predicted because the heavy wet snow is to change to rain and then if it freezes later, branches will break and lines will go down. The tree-trimming schedule is better now, but I still wonder why some effort hasn't been made to put some of the lines underground. Just another infrastructure issue, I guess, where we defer maintenance to "save money." Then, like the I-35W bridge, more money, and lives, are lost.
And here's a little Shakespeare for you, the verse that
comes into my head whenever I look out the window
at this picture:

WINTER

When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all around the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl --
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Although there are precious few shepherds blowing "nails" here, milking is done mostly with milking machines, crab(apple) roasting is in decline, and most of us are fairly clean and keel (stir) our own pots now, it is surprising how much of the rest of the poem still fits our experience of winter.

And apropos of the owl, one last photo, of the truck with a snowplow attached (a common amenity here) which has just finished clearing the parking lot of the Snowy Owl Gallery next door. (They cast silver, mostly, jewelry for a number of local designers and sell some of it in the front room. They bring their dogs, Isabella, Truman, and Chester, to work, and Rusty enjoys visiting with them.) I am looking down over our front yard and our driveway, which is on the basement level; it's not really a miniature truck.

Songs to Celebrate Winter

So, I skipped a few Tuneful Tuesdays, I was too busy having fun with Sisterknits and others. Next week I'll try to have a few ideas for Epiphany season music, but today in keeping with the previous post here are a few songs for celebrating winter (or daydreaming about it, if you live in a place with no snow).

1. A-Roving on a Winter's Night -- Anne Hills, Cindy Mangsen, Priscilla Herdman -- Voices of Winter.
This is the most mournful of the songs, but it's so pretty. And winter does give us time to reflect and remember. It's by Doc Watson, but owes a lot to Robert Burns's My Luve Is Like a Red, Red Rose.

2. Bleak Midwinter Polka -- Trailer Trash -- Hell, It's X-Mas.
Trailer Trash is a Minneapolis bar band that I've never heard in person. In this song, written by their fiddle player "Razz" Russell, they have a good suggestion for what to do if and when winter gets you down (as it sometimes does in Minneapolis, that's why they say the polka "makes living in this hell worthwhile.")

3. Walkin' in My Winter Underwear -- Trailer Trash -- Hell, It's X-Mas.
Trailer Trash's almost unintelligible version of the song made famous by Yogi Yorgesson, Stan and Doug, and Casey the Railroad Engineer (a favorite of Twin Cities children's TV). I caught something about Lake Street and got the idea that the singer is quite positive about his winter underwear, unlike the earlier singers, who had the old, scratchy version. For one of the original versions by Casey,

4. Snow Day -- Trout Fishing in America -- Merry Fishes to All.
The duo Trout Fishing in America has a childlike point of view with some very grown-up abilities at songwriting. This song is about the joy of waking up to a snow day, with all normal activities put on hold and an unexpected chance to play.

5. Frosty the Snowman -- The Roches -- We Three Kings.
This classic is given a fresh interpretation by the three New Jersey sisters and some of their young relatives. It's lots of fun. Frosty was written by Walter "Jack" Rollins and Steve Nelson, who also wrote Peter Cottontail; and Jack Rollins wrote Smokey the Bear. It was, of course, first recorded by Gene Autry (when I was little, I wanted to marry him. I'd be a lot richer if I had!)

6. Bob and Bob -- Trout Fishing in America -- Merry Fishes to All.
The conceit in this song is that there are identical twin snowflakes named Bob and Bob, when of course we all know that no two snowflakes are alike. There's also some interesting information about snow here and there.

7. Hot Buttered Rum -- Anne Hills, Cindy Mangsen, Priscilla Herdman -- Voices of Winter.
A winter love song, with a somewhat jaundiced view of winter redeemed by the presence of a loved one. It was written by the late Tommy Thompson, founding member of the Red Clay Ramblers. You can go here to see some great illustrations of the song done by kids.

8. Winter Weather/I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm -- Tony Bennett -- Snowfall.
There are several other great winter songs on this album, too. These two, sung in a medley, both speak to the joys of snuggling in the cold weather. Winter Weather was written by Tin Pan Alley songwriter Ted Shapiro, who was active in the 1920s and wrote a lot of songs for Sophie Tucker, the Red Hot Mama. I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm was introduced in the film On the Avenue in 1937 and was written by Irving Berlin. Tony Bennett is a national treasure.

9. The Frozen Logger/Proper Cup of Coffee -- Anne Hills, Cindy Mangsen, Priscilla Herdman -- Voices of Winter.
The Frozen Logger was written in the 1920s by Jim Stevens, who also wrote (or wrote down) a lot of the Paul Bunyan stories. The Weavers found it and had a hit with it in 1951, and it's been recorded by Odetta and several others. Proper Cup of Coffee was originally (as far as I can tell) recorded by the Andrews Sisters (also from Minneapolis!) in the late 1950s, and has also been recorded by Trout Fishing in America. Although written by Emanuele Pellegrini and Aaron Gershunoff, it has become somewhat of a folk song with different singers coming up with new verses, as Hills, Mangsen and Herdman have done here. The tune is slightly different now too, or at least jazzed up quite a bit.

You may have noticed that three out of the nine tracks above are from the same album -- I highly recommend Voices of Winter as well as all the other discs these three women have recorded both together and individually.

A Real Maine Winter, at Last!

Here's one of the sights Rusty and I saw on our walk this afternoon. Today, machinery and trucks were everywhere carting away excess snow, so our sidewalks are now a bit more walkable. It has been almost Minnesota-cold the last couple of days, but I think it's warming up a bit now. I have always remembered that on the day I joined the Army, 29 January 1971, we had had my height in snow here (65 or 66 inches). The paper said the other day that indeed, our area has had the snowiest December since 1970. Life seems to go on much as usual, though, with only occasional closings and cancellations which are soon made up. Here is a picture of one of the ways we prepare for winter; my readers in Georgia and California have probably never seen such a thing. It is a fire hydrant with a metal flag on top so that it can be located in the deep snow. The Fire Department comes around in their chartreuse trucks and shovels out each fire hydrant by hand a day or so after the storm.

Pictures of snow for people who are lacking it

Here's the moon at 3:30 this afternoon.


Rusty is digging in the snow. He thinks he'll find a squirrel.
Some people don't have any snow! Some people don't have lions in front of their houses! Some people don't have a dog! Here are some photos for all those folks.


The lions are really covered in snow now. Rusty likes to climb the snowbanks.