Now Is The Time, Not Later

In a recent email, Environmental Defense Action Fund (EDAF)’s David Yarnold says, of the upcoming Senate vote on the Climate:

….Big Coal and the National Association of Manufacturers are spending tens of millions of dollars to sabotage the bill. Their misinformation campaign claims the bill would cost American jobs and wreck the economy.

At a time when the American economy is struggling with $4-a-gallon gas, we must confront this misleading propaganda head on. In fact, passing global warming legislation will create jobs and build the clean energy economy of the 21st century.

We’re also fighting “decoy” global warming proposals, like the one recently offered by Senator George Voinovich (R-OH). His plan is pure smokescreen with subsidies and loopholes that will allow global warming pollution to increase for decades.

The EDAF is working all-out to pass this legislation this time.  They need the money to make this possible: major media and public attention and interest, action from all sectors of the community, making sure the bill is not watered down and persuading swing senators to vote for it.  These are exactly the actions needed right now.

There’s a dollar-for-dollar matching gift on the table now through June 1.  The money is urgently needed.

Give now through the EDAF secure site.

Don’t wait.  Do whatever you can.  Even a little will help.  Give your kids and grandkids, nephews and nieces, the chance to ask you: What did you do to help us through the climate crisis?

Sun, Sun, Sun

Today is a beautiful brightly sunny cloudless day, ambient temperature 18 F. We’ve just had a series of winter storms, and the days have mostly been below freezing, with snow, freezing rain, or rain that later freezes, blustery winds, and superbly frosty temperatures — with wind chills that I don’t even like to think of.

 

While it’s still cold, the air is relatively still and the sun is out.  Hooray!  At this point, and from inside letting the sun shine into the house everywhere possible, it seems relatively warm (although it’s not; hat scarf and gloves are called for as well as a ski coat, and don’t stay out in it too long).  

 

I did notice one excellent thing this morning: since we’re starting to approach the equinox (OK, it’s a good month away, but we’re closer to it than to the solstice we just passed in December) the sun’s rising point has now moved eastward enough to start shining directly into my studio windows, which face ESE.  Around the winter solstice, the arc of the sun’s path is very much in the south: rises in the SSE, sets in the SSW.  Slowly that opens out closer to E and W and, near the summer solstice, well beyond, so that the sun seems to sweep out an arc that includes most of the sky. Now it has reached far enough around to shine into my windows at an angle, at least; still a very acute angle from very much toward the South, but it does actually shine in and with every prospect of shining in ever more directly.

 

Hooray!  Although we’re still icebound, at the moment, spring is on its way — sometime.

Changing Seasons

I’m watching the sun pour through the trees I can see from my window, while they move in a light breeze. During the day, the direction of the sunlight will change from upper left to upper right, and different sets of leaves and needles will be illuminated. The placement of the contrast between lit and shadowed will change constantly. Small insects and flashes of spider web threads become visible for a moment in the light, then re-enter the invisibility of shadow. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

About ten days ago, it was 90 degrees and no breezes were blowing. Overnight, we went to 70-degree days. The clouds cleared away, without awarding us much in the way of rain.

And three days ago, the first shadings of red appeared in the maple tree on the corner, and a few bright yellow leaves were seen on the tulip tree, and a drive yesterday showed traces of color on many trees where green had been the rule only a few days before. And today, there’s a little more red and a little more yellow here and there, and the sunlight plays on the trees, through the trees.

Seasons change. So what’s different about this time, this year? The date. It’s now late October, and usually, in this area, really high temperatures don’t persist much beyond the first week of September. I’ve seen autumn this far advanced in late August, some years.

I for one am happy to see summer linger as long as possible. I like fall of all seasons, but it tends to be all too brief — and it is followed by winter. Winter has its own beauty, and we don’t usually get a lot of snow here — this isn’t the snowbelt, thank goodness — just a few winter storms and a couple of cold snaps lasting a week or two during the coldest months. But I’m not fond of it.

The real problem with winter here is the lack of sunlight. I’m enjoying every moment of sun that I can. Because it’s comfortably cool out now, the curtains are wide open on the south side of the house, and I’m getting in all the heat and light from the sun that I can, trying somehow to store it up, in my memory if nowhere else. Winters are cloudy here — we have an average of 280 days a year of cloudy weather, mostly in the winter months, although not nearly as much winter precipitation as all that cloudiness might suggest — and after a while of no sunshine it can become depressing.

Many people who live here here travel south on vacation or even to winter quarters in the sun belt. I stay here and catch the sun as often as it shines, and use full-spectrum lighting when it doesn’t. Skylights can help with general illumination even when it’s cloudy, and I’ve set up a painting studio in a small skylighted room on which I can close the doors when I’m finished painting. Since I create works on paper, with inks and watercolors, gouaches and pastels, a small space is enough: no giant canvases need apply, and no odors of turpentine or varnish float around in the house.

Right now its sunny and green outside, with sunlight streaming in. The carpet near the windows is old and was already faded when I moved in; the sofas are all slipcovered. So I enjoy the direct sun’s heat and light. All too soon, it will get cloudy and cold, and I’ll keep the drapes closed against it. Meanwhile, to borrow the poet’s phrasing, beautiful, beautiful, and yet again most beautiful…

Starter Restartus

Now that leaving the windows open for the house to air out during the day seems like a good idea, it’s an ideal time to put together some flour and water and capture some of those wild yeasts to make sourdough starter.

Sure, you can keep your dandy starter just fine all summer in the fridge. But I think that a re-start (so to speak) is needed, at least in my house.

When it’s cooler, bread-baking will become an increasingly rewarding activity, with not just fine bread but a warm kitchen. And that terrific fresh-baked bread smell… Wonderful!

Pivotal Days

Lots of things are changing: August is giving way to September, Leo has given way to Virgo, summer vacation is giving way to autumn school sessions and renewed deadline-pushing at work, and a spell of brutally hot weather interrupted by severe storms and gales has given way to more peaceful and pleasant weather, much more suitable to walks and picnics.

Yesterday the hot spell finally broke and temperatures were in the high 70s for most of the day. Very comfortable. And there was a pleasant breeze, someting noticeably lacking during the hot spell. It’s a good time to have windows open, air out the house, maybe get some of that fall cleaning, straightening and changing over done.

A friend told me a weather factoid he picked up recently: hot days in September will occur during the first seven days of the month, according to historical weather data for this location. We’ll see what happens during the slightly cooler but still pleasantly warm month of September.

Placement Bureau

We’re in the middle of a dry spell, but there’s no restriction on water use, so each morning this week I’ve gotten up with the pre-dawn light and set out the oscillating spray and watered the lawn just outside my windows. It’s a small lawn, and irregularly shaped, fitting into a space where two streets meet at odd angles, and bordered by a curving path at one end.

My task (as I have chosen to accept it) is to find a placement of the sprayer so that the minimum number of waterings will cover the entire lawn with a minimum of overlap.

When I bought the sprayer, I found one that was adjustable in width — firm plastic sleeves could be rotated to cover or uncover openings at each end, so that the shape of the overall spray could be narrowed or widened on each side.

I’ve found a way to use the full width to water the wide end, and the narrowest width at the other, a long corridor between the curving sidewalk on one side and evergreens planted along the other. And because the lawn is much longer than it is wide, there is almost no overlap.

This is the kind of satisfying solution to a minor but important detail that pleases me. There is no restriction on water use just now, the lawn is being saved during a hot spell, and it is all being done in the most economical — in the full sense of that term — manner.

And, furthermore, it’s fun to rush out to the spigot to turn the water on or off and get sprinkled by those little dots of water.

This morning I was up so early I interrupted the Morning Cheep. The early bird gets the watering done.

Marching On

Some have agreed with the poet that April is the cruellest month, but I would put my bid in for March. April does indeed play hide and seek with our longing for warm weather and the blossoms of spring, without the showers.

But March does it first.

Now, on the penultimate day of March, we have had three sunny days in a row, with two half-hearted mostly cloudy ones before that. A veritable heat wave.

If this keeps up, I won’t know how to act.

But I hope it will keep up, for a while, because we were bathed in storms of all kinds. My sump pump gave warning that it was getting ready to give up the ghost on a Friday afternoon, and I was able to book in a plumber for the Monday morning, early. It labored valiantly — and loudly — over the weekend, and held the rising waters off until a new one could be installed. For which I am very grateful: a dry basement is no small thing with the amount of water we had had dumped on us and which had saturated the ground.

That poor old pump: when the plumber showed it to me, after putting the new one in, I saw a nearly shapeless mass of corrosion and rust. I honestly don’t know how it had managed to continue working as long as it did.

Just as important to me was the re-establishment of the Sun in the heavens. Yes, yes, I know perfectly well it’s there all the time in daylight hours, but you could get no eyewitness evidence of that if you lived in this area during the past March. Scads of clouds — thick layers, turbulent and gray — moved across the sky. Once in a while there might be a break, and the sun could shine palely through for all too brief a time. But then the clouds would take over once more. And, of course, all too often they opened up with storm after storm.

There has been every combination: thunder and lightning storms, storms without thunder and lightning, rainstorms, sleet, snow, even small hail at one point. We even had a thunder-and-lightning snowstorm. It didn’t last long, but it was quite an event, in its way.

But now I am looking out and seeing the sun pouring in the south windows. The temperature is mild enough for me to let that happen, and allow the solar warmth come in. Later — in April, or possibly May — I will need to make the decision to close the thermal drapes against the sun’s heat (it’s difficult to imagine that contingency right now, but I know it will come, probably sooner than I like).

Ah well. Not today, that’s my whole point. Today I can see the sun, look out at it, bask in its light and warmth. Ah. Wonderful.

Equinoctial Gales

While the American Meteorological Society may attempt to debunk the idea, I can say at least that in this vernal equinoctial season there have been storms, storms, storms.

It’s not enough to say that we have had alternating clear and rainy (or sometimes sleet-y) days, nor that colder weather has alternated with warmer weather at a slower rhythm.  These are storms, a series of storms passing through, some of them quite heavy.  And all during the days and weeks surrounding the equinox.

While that’s not ‘proof’ of anything, one way or another, it’s certainly been an experience.

Ideas like ‘equinoctial gales’ are dependent on perceptions gathered over the years.  I note that this is the vernal equinox and this is not the Caribbean, AMS please take note.  From now on I shall take note of the storms of March (isn’t that a kind of ‘tell’ right there, the storms of March?)

A term like ‘equinoctial gales,’ the result of informal but informed perceptions, is not anything like ‘here be dragons.’  It is not an ‘urban legend,’ unless the city you have in mind might be the lost city of Atlantis.  ‘Stormy March’ is another way of saying ‘equinoctial gales.’

While you’re figuring it all out, better remember to wear your waterproofs.

… And Back Again

For the last two or three months, in and amongst the daily activities and happenings of life, I’ve had one lingering and unbudgeable feeling: that I couldn’t seem to get interested in any of my projects, pieces, artworks, writings, even in cooking, something which at other times has the power to make me feel good.

It didn’t seem to be any of the individual happenings or situations during that time; each of those was surmounted, dealt with, or handled in some way to my relative satisfaction. The feeling of lack of interest persisted regardless of the ups and downs.

Finally, today, a sunny day when it seems to actually be getting nicely warmer here, I woke up feeling positive and interested in a particular approach to some art subjects. I consulted some of my reference books, and drew up a brief list of art supplies, items I’d need but don’t have on hand. I was able to find the items on my list at my favorite online art store at a good price, and ordered them.

I’m interested, even excited at doing the project, looking forward to it. At last!

What’s the answer?

I can’t be sure, but I think I’ve been suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). In this region, February and March are characterized by a lot of cloudy, gray, sometimes rainy or snowy weather, interspersed occasionally with a sunny day which only makes the run of cloudy weather seem gloomier by contrast.

Thinking back to other years, I note that late winter/early spring has routinely been the time when I’ve felt inertia, lack of interest, relative passivity, and a general tendency to hunker. I’ve wished sometimes that I were a hibernating animal, because it might be less frustrating to get through these months that way.
Many people who live around here and who can afford to do so spend the winter in sunnier climes, or vacation in distant lands (often in the Southern Hemisphere) during this time.

Well, I woke up today interested and looking forward to getting to various projects I’ve got underway. And by contrast, I can see what the problem was before. OK. I’ve got the range now, and forewarned is forearmed for next year. Get those full-spectrum lamps working — or find a way to follow the sun when it disappears from this area!