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Published on 6 Comments on Warmth, Glorious Warmth

January 2001 was our third winter in the Great White North that is Minnesota. By then we had adjusted somewhat to the infamous Minnesota winters, mainly due to two things: an excellent road-clearing infrastructure, and the extreme weather clothing industry.

We lived in Minnesota for eight years, and I kid you not - we had TWO snow days. In eight years. Think about that for a minute. We had two snow days the first six months after we moved to South Carolina. That doesn't mean it didn't snow all those years in MN. Oh no. It snowed. Not inches. FEET. All those pretty little white flakes contributing to the PSC - the Permanent Snow Cover - from about December to March.  But the snowplows were out there like banshees. Roads plowed pretty as you please in plenty of time for the school buses to come chugging along. Man, my kids were ticked off.


Mine wasn't this shaggy

I had so many different types of coats when I lived there. Along with all the windbreakers and hoodies and sweaters and parkas, I had two super heavy, beastly thick coats. We're talkin' Jeremiah Johnson here. One was a sheepskin-type coat, buff color suede on the outside and the woolly business on the inside. But as a brunette (a 'Winter' for you gals who know your season colors) that buff color never looked particularly good on me (dead giveaway - people always asking me if I felt okay when I wore it), so when I found a similar style coat in a gorgeous dark chocolate brown for a sweet deal at a consignment store in St. Paul, I snagged it. You look at this coat and your first thought is 'buffalo hide'. A really stylish, well-tailored buffalo hide. Talk about warm! It was like walking around in a toaster oven. They were some of the first things I gave away when we got word we were transferred to South Carolina. Absolute rock-solid guaranteed lock I was never, ever going to need those coats south of the Mason-Dixon line.*

And then there was the temperature-rated footwear. I was not aware such things existed until I moved to Minnesota, and boy was I glad they did. Let's not forget the special socks, underwear, hats, gloves for wind, snow, ice, sleet, fog, and all the various combinations. Minnesota is a very clothing-intensive place. If you go there in any month other than July, you will need to pack lots and lots of extra items. Layer!! If you move there, buy a house with lots of closets and storage space - you will need it.

But I digress.

Snowplows and cold weather gear notwithstanding, I was born and raised and lived most of my first 30+ years in a warm weather climate, and not just any warm weather climate. I am a Native Texan, and when I say warm, I mean HOT, and not just your garden variety hot. We're talking preheat the (electric) oven, open it up and take a deep breath, singe your nasal hairs hot. People say if you live in a warm climate, your blood is thinner. I don't know if that is true or not but I think it is true in spirit - you just never get used to cold weather. In addition, based on my informal survey aka Common Sense, there are way more people moving south or traveling south to escape cold weather than there are those going in the other direction. Just ask Ohio and Long Island how many of their former residents now have a South Carolina zip code.

It was a struggle for me, getting through some of those long, cold winters. I remember the time I got an ice cream headache walking into a headwind from the parking lot into the grocery store. I think it was 4 degrees (F) before wind chill calculation. Hey, at least it was above zero! Here's how crazy my thinking got after a few years up there: it wasn't cold as long as the temp was in double digits (above zero, of course). So as long as it was 10 or warmer, I could usually trick myself into bearing one more day of winter. It didn't take me long to get my thinking straight after we moved to South Carolina, where everyone knows anything below 50F is cold. That reminds me of the time my folks (also Native Texans) were visiting and my mom kept asking me why the children we passed playing happily outside weren't wearing coats. It was probably about 50 outside, and to a Minnesotan, that's downright balmy!

Minnesota is a gorgeous place and I love my Minnesota friends. But after eight years there, I am convinced hell is not a place of fire and flame. Nope. It is icy and cold, dreary and overcast. The wind is always in your face, you are always one layer short, you've lost your only hat, and you are out of lip balm.

* Extra points if you actually know where the Mason-Dixon line is. Google if you must.

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2

Published on 2 Comments on Serendipitous Star Sightings

Scorpio? or not?

Just got back from a visit with our daughter who lives in Los Angeles. We were there for a few days and did a lot of sightseeing. The first thing my son asked me when we got back was if we saw any celebrities. I saw some stars, alright, but not the kind he meant.

My star sighting was a complete surprise, like the other day when my daughter looked out her living room window and saw a grubby, barely recognizable Michael Cera ambling down the sidewalk, likely headed to one of the many delightful cafes in Silver Lake.

You just never know when the stars will reveal themselves. Ask any of those thousands of tourists overflowing the Hollywood tour buses, clutching their star maps in one hand and cell phone cameras in the other. You can stare holes in the beautiful California scenery for hours and not see a single vaguely attractive person, much less an authentic celebrity. Weirdos and wannabes are plentiful, but the real thing - not so much. Then, when you least expect it, one saunters by less than twenty feet away, on his way to buy a cuppa Joe. 

Back to my star sighting: on the long drive home from the Hotlanta airport, we found ourselves passing through rural Georgia in the middle of the night. Most excellent for (real) stargazing with one small problem: aside from the Big Dipper and Orion, I don't know the Milky Way from a Milk Dud. So I'm looking out the passenger side window which is facing south (I don't know constellations but I do know the four compass directions most of the time), minding my own business, barely awake, when I noticed a very prominent, swirly arrangement of stars in the lower half of the sky. I knew it had to be one of the well-known constellations. I mean, if I could spot it, anyone could - especially pre-historic genius star gazers. I got very excited about this because I always thought it would be cool to know more than two constellations on sight, and maybe this was my chance to add a third! After some frustrating digging around online, I think it was Scorpius - or Scorpio for you horoscope fans, the killer insect of late fall birthday fame. Now I have to ask why a fall birthday constellation is so prominent in a summer sky, but I will save that for another Google search.


Dam sunset on Lake Murray 🙂

I haven't seen Scorpio since due to cloudy nighttime conditions. And after looking at star charts, I am wondering if it was something else, maybe Draco? I will definitely be checking it out the next time we have clear skies at night which naturally will not be any time soon. We need the rain, but it figures the only rainy spell we have had all summer aligns perfectly with the only time I am itching for my own personal Star Search. Stay tuned and I will let you know when I find some more. Have you seen the skies above Lake Murray, SC? Should be a snap.

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2

Published on 2 Comments on Snuggle Up And Think Of Spring

This post originally appeared in January 2014. I'm thankful to report we dodged the more recent Polar Vortex. No precip here; lows overnight in the 30s - ABOVE zero. I've hated watching the news of all the weather in the Midwest. Stay warm! Higher temps due any time now!

It's cold here, and getting colder by the minute. Much of the country got hammered by Mother Nature this week. We are far enough south that we won't get any white stuff this go-round, thank goodness. But it's plenty cold enough, into the teens over night. That would be above zero, also thank goodness. My former neighbors in Minnesota have good reason to make that distinction.

As a Native Texan, I have zero cold weather defense mechanisms. My survival skills are designed for hot weather: mainly seeking shade and sweating. I can sweat like a horse. But when cold weather rolls in, I'm helpless as a reality show actor without a script. I have some body fat, but it doesn't help much. I am middle-aged, but there's never a hot flash around when you need one.

Some people say southerners are 'thin-skinned', or that we're 'cold-natured'. One of my Yankee in-laws prefers the less accurate but more insulting 'cold-blooded', like lizards. It doesn't help that we refute her snarks from the nearest sunny window, eyes closed, faces tracking the sun's path, basking like, well,  lizards. 
During my husband's career, we spent eight years living in Minnesota.  You do not mess with the cold in Minnesota. School children are taught how to create survival kits for the car in case you are stranded during a snowstorm (candles, matches, flashlight, batteries, Sterno, water, blankets, breakfast bars). Fire hydrants come equipped with what looks like recycled CB antennae to make them easier to find when there's five feet of PSC* from December to March. The lakes freeze so hard, they can easily support large tent cities of ice fishermen/women, vehicles included. I once got an ice cream headache while walking from my car into the grocery store. It was 4 degrees at the time. There was no ice cream involved.

Beautiful place, Minnesota, but I could never get used to the cold. When the

This is how Minnesotans walk on water.

opportunity arose to move to a warmer climate, we took it. Now we're back in a climate where the chances of snow are about equal to the chances of the Cowboys winning another Superbowl - possible, but unlikely. Fire hydrants are antenna-less, as nature intended. The closest thing to a survival kit in my car is lip balm and a cell phone charger. So we will ride out this temporary meterological unpleasantness. The fire is roaring in the fireplace. I have on my favorite flannel jammy pants.  As I learned from my time in Minnesota, whenever the temp is above zero and in double digits, life is good.

*Permanent Snow Cover - the stuff that is not going to melt until spring.

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3

Published on 3 Comments on Dreary Days And Icy Nights

Is that dreary, or what?

Today is an overcast, dreary January day in South Carolina. I am sitting here in front of the computer screen, wondering if/when the predicted big winter storm is going to hit. We have made it through to mid-afternoon unscathed. I am hoping the precip holds off until the temperatures dip a little more, and we can skip the ice fest and just deal with the snow. If there's one thing I hate worse than cold weather, it's cold weather paired with a power outage.

It's been a rough winter for many in other parts of the country this year, and we are only halfway through it. Cold weather always has me pining for warmth and sunshine and summer. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting near a body of water in a comfy lounge chair, soaking up the sun on one of those perfect days between spring and summer. You know the day I mean. It's not too hot or humid, not a cloud in the sky, temp about 74 degrees F. Growing up in Texas, I've had this day happen in January a time or two. Definitely won't be happening today.

Whenever the warm weather finally arrives, we should all be thankful for it. It certainly is not guaranteed. Nearly two hundred years ago, much of the northern hemisphere experienced a phenomenon known as 'The Year Without Summer'. New England experienced both the latest recorded frosts (June) and the earliest (August). Daytime highs and lows were well below average everywhere records were kept. The unfortunate congruence of unseasonable lows with planting season spelled disaster. This was long before we developed a national transportation infrastructure, so if local food sources went kaput, you went hungry.

It was nearly 100 years before science and technology caught up enough to render an opinion on what may have caused 1816 to be such a cold year. Scientists determined it was a series of volcanic events, culminating with the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815.

Mt. Tambora behaving itself.

Before today, if you had said 'Tambora' to me, I would have thought you were talking about a drummer in a rock band. But no. Mount Tambora is a volcano in Indonesia. Its eruption was many times bigger than that of Mount St. Helens in 1980. Tambora was also bigger than its more famous Indonesian cousin, Krakatoa (1883). Tambora dumped so much stuff into the atmosphere, the stuff screened some of our sunlight and had a cooling effect. Weather patterns worldwide were impacted for three years afterward. Famine, floods, disease, and riots swept throughout Europe and Asia as a result.

Here in the U.S., the crop failures of 1816 pressured many to leave the northeast, hoping for better growing conditions and milder weather. The Year Without Summer may have been the final impetus needed to head west and see what opportunities lay there.

As soon as I stepped outside to document today's dreariness and wrap up this post, a raindrop hit me in the eyeball. At least it was still rain - but for how long? Is it too late to request a Year Without Winter?

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Published on Leave a comment on Current Affairs

Here in the south, it's that fun time of year when spring thunderstorms overlap hurricane season. Whenever a storm passes through and we emerge unscathed, one of my first thoughts is: hurray - the power didn't go out!

I can handle rough weather as long as I still have running water (we're on a well) and an Internet signal. Some day I may write a horror story based on  a power outage. There is nothing so terrifying as punching the buttons on the microwave and nothing happens. Well, maybe one other thing: opening the fridge and no light comes on.

Being thankful for power puts me in mind of a great television program I saw about the genesis of the electrical power biz here in the U.S. If you have not seen it and you are a history nerd, give it a look. Inventors George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison were the original AC/DC duo.

I'm not going to pretend I understand the science here. But I have a good grasp of the publicity war these two birds engaged in. Both men were desperate to have their own technology perceived as the best, safest means of distributing electricity. In 1889 the Niagara Falls Power Commission (NFPC) was established to evaluate and select one for use at their plant. The NFPC was composed of experts in the field, and supported by wealth entrepreneurs who had a keen interest in the outcome. Whatever was chosen would likely be the foundation of the American electricity industry. Edison and his company, General Electric, held many patents on the DC (direct current) technology. The pressure was enormous to have DC selected. If a different technology such as Westinghouse's AC (alternating current) prevailed, obviously Edison would stand to lose money as well as prestige.

I wonder how this 'current war' would have played in the age of Facebook and Twitter. It was actually gruesome enough without the complication of Internet technology. Edison's main method of trolling Westinghouse was to paint AC power as dangerous. He documented the use of AC power to kill animals and even humans via electric chair. Let that sink in for a minute: He paid a guy to build and use an AC-powered electric chair at a New York prison to demonstrate how dangerous Westinghouse's product was.

I have a feeling Edison's antics backfired. The NFPC was not swayed by his tactics. As the Current Wars raged, the technology for safely transmitting and distributing AC power improved. Eventually AC proved to be easier, cheaper and safer to transmit and distribute over long distances. Westinghouse was awarded the NFPC contract in 1893. Edison and General Electric threw in the towel and made the switch, devoting their energies to AC research as well as DC. They did pretty well for themselves, didn't they? Both companies are still alive and kickin' even as we speak.

Edison may have been ruthless. He may have been an elephant-electrocuting creep. But he was also a genius, some say the Steve Jobs of his day, and the inventor of the little miracle that comes on every time I open the fridge (at least when we have power). 

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Published on Leave a comment on Dam Impressive

All the mayhem here in South Carolina thanks to Hurricane Joaquin in 2015, (which btw thank you for not making landfall - if you had, I would've been composing this from my ark) resulted in a host of water topics on my mind. Specifically, I set about collecting all manner of anecdotes and factoids about the massive concrete dam that's keeping the 763,000,000,000 (that's BILLION in case you have misplaced your reading glasses) gallons, give or take, of water in Lake Murray from washing away most of Columbia 30 miles downstream. 

Look carefully and you can see three of the six floodgates, open in 2015 for the first time since 1969

Lake Murray is a 50,000 acre engineering behemoth, with 500 miles of shoreline. It's fed by the Saluda and Little Saluda rivers. Its dam is 1.5 miles long and more than 200 feet high. Walking or driving across the dam, you get a sense this thing is impregnable. Then you watch some video of the raging torrents generated by Joaquin's 1000-year rainfall, and you start to wonder.

The original dam was completed in 1930, made of our famous red clay and bedrock. In the early aughts there were some concerns that the original dam might breach, not because of water pressure, but due to earthquake activity, of all things. This area isn't generally known for earthquakes, but some small ones have occurred over the past several years, so better safe than sorry! The concrete backup dam was completed in 2005, and boy am I glad. If I had known that the original dam was technically 'earthen', I would've been a lot more worried for the residents of Columbia.

During Joaquin, the local utility company had to activate the floodgates for the first time since 1969. They release water all the time to generate power, but those gates are different from floodgates. Can you imagine the heart rate of the engineer who had to push the Open button for the first time in forever with the added bonus of being the midst of one of the biggest weather crises the area has ever known? I can just see him/her: eyes closed, whispering, "please please please please please" . . .

A closer look at the 2005 backup dam looking south

During the flood crisis, I understand they did an emergency test of the floodgate siren that scared the ever-lovin' bejeebers out of Lexington County residents within earshot. Note to SCE&G: maybe let's work on our floodgate siren test timing??

 

When we first moved here, we eagerly devoured Lake Murray lore. Some of my favorites:

  • Some of the islands on Lake Murray were used as practice bombing targets by the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. The Doolittle Raiders honed their skills on Lake Murray and elsewhere prior to their top-secret mission: the first American air strike on a Japanese home island.

    One of the B-25s recovered from Lake Murray
  • Bombs aren't the only thing the army dropped into the lake. In 2005 they recovered one of several bombers that crashed during practice. It's in a museum now.
  • One practice raid went awry when a business owner about 15 miles west of Bomb Island didn't get the memo there was a practice run scheduled, and didn't turn off the lights when he went home that evening. Thankfully the practice bombs were more like bomblets, filled with white powder rather than explosives, and no one was hurt.
  • The main engineer of the original dam, and for whom the lake is named (William Murray) had a partner on the project named (wait for it): Henry Flood.
  • Speaking of: when they created the lake, several communities were flooded. Homes, businesses, churches, and cemeteries are still down there under those billions of gallons of lake water. Talk about being underwater on your mortgage.
  • The second, backup dam received a prestigious engineering award in 2006, beating out other impressive projects including the Arthur Ravenel bridge in Charleston.
  • Most years, one of the islands on Lake Murray is home to over 700,000 purple martins from June-September. It's such a large flock it can be seen from space. During boating season, sometimes it seems like the people-to-bird ratio is about 1:1.

I remain completely in awe of the hard work and brainpower, not to mention our tax dollars at work, that goes into these mega-projects, especially when it means keeping the lights (and the Internet) on. Nevertheless, Mother Nature sure does find interesting ways to remind us who's really the boss. Stay safe out there, folks.

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Published on Leave a comment on All Wrapped Up In The Polar Vortex

Mother Nature dropped a bitterly cold nastygram on our doorsteps this week. While I abhor cold weather in all its guises, I admit I am crushing on the meteorological moniker sometimes bestowed upon these events: 'polar vortex'.

A NASA image of a past polar vortex. Image source here.

Polar Vortex.

Polar. VORtex.

I find myself swishing it around in my mind as well as my mouth, enjoying the feel of it as that V and that X come tantalizingly close to colliding, were it not for the abrupt intervention of R and T. I really don't care what it means (although I did Google - NERD). It's one of those great phrases I will be tossing around for as long as I can get away with it. Somebody please name a car and a lipstick and a Ben & Jerry's flavor after this thing ASAP. Marketing gold, I'm tellin' ya.

Which of course got me thinking about other phrases I enjoy saying, hearing, thinking, regardless of what they mean. In my favorites, the words just sound great together. Much like a fine wine, the individual components intertwine in a way that guarantees satisfaction. It's all about the perfect pairing of consonants with syllable count. Too many vowels, and you come off wheezy and ineffective. Too many syllables, and it's clunky and unpronounceable. And don't forget about a touch of emphasis at the proper time. In the above example, it must be the VOR; not the PO, not the LAR and certainly not the TEX.

Here are a few more of my favorites. Check out those consonants!

Battlestar Galactica - it's all about the 'ac', a little about the added 'a'. Battlestar Galactic would be fairly cool, but that extra 'a' is the cherry on top.

Big Bang - short and sweet, yet explains a complex astronomical phenomenon even a four-year-old can understand. And you can't ignore the sexual overtones here. Apologies to all the four-year-olds.

Event Horizon - maybe due to the perfectly wretched eponymous movie, but a shiver runs down my spine whenever I hear this phrase. It says Ruh Roh! in the classiest possible way.

Superconducting Super Collider - all those S's slamming around, describing something so smashing, one 'super' doesn't do the job!

Boom Stick - Originally intended for baseball bats, but I hijacked it for my tennis racquet. At my age this is a bit of a stretch to describe my game, but it amuses me, so it stays.

Seeing a pattern here. The science community must have a heckuva marketing linguist stashed away somewhere!

There is some science behind my amateur analysis of what makes words 'sound' good together. Turns out most people prefer words with a good balance of vowels and consonants. Words containing letters that make more noise ('plosive' to you linguists out there) attract more attention - the backfiring cars of phonetics. And as in most things, sexism also rears its ugly head. Some letters are perceived as masculine; others feminine. There is some overlap between the noisy letters and the masculine letters, as anyone who has raised boys could have predicted.

The cold is already receding from  my part of the country. I won't miss it, but I will miss hearing and reading about the Polar Vortex throughout the day. I know I can count on the wordsmiths to come up with a few more delightful word pairings to get us through the winter. A pity we also have deal with the not-so-delightful weather they accompany.

 

This post originally appeared in January 2014.

Published on Leave a comment on All We Need Is Warmth

I know I promised a series of travel posts about our 2016 trip to Europe as newbie tourists. But after spending the first week of 2017 in bitterly cold South Dakota during Winter Storm Helena, I thought I would re-share this post instead. Enjoy and stay warm!

Bald Eagle Lake is under all that snow and ice

January 2001 was our third winter in the Great White North that is Minnesota. By then we had adjusted somewhat to the infamous Minnesota winters, mainly due to two things: an excellent road-clearing infrastructure, and the extreme weather clothing industry.

We lived in Minnesota for eight years, and I kid you not - we had TWO snow days. In eight years. Think about that for a minute. We had two snow days the first six months after we moved to South Carolina. That doesn't mean it didn't snow all those years in MN. Oh no. It snowed. Not inches. FEET. All those pretty little white flakes contributing to the PSC - the Permanent Snow Cover - from about December to March.  But the snowplows were out there like banshees. Roads plowed pretty as you please in plenty of time for the school buses to come chugging along. Man, my kids were ticked off.

Mine wasn't this shaggy

I had so many different types of coats when I lived there. Along with all the windbreakers and hoodies and sweaters and parkas, I had two super heavy, beastly thick coats. We're talkin' Jeremiah Johnson here. One was a sheepskin-type coat, buff color suede on the outside and the woolly business on the inside. But as a brunette (a 'Winter' for you gals who know your season colors) that buff color never looked particularly good on me (dead giveaway - people always asking me if I felt okay when I wore it), so when I found a similar style coat in a gorgeous dark chocolate brown for a sweet deal at a consignment store in St. Paul, I snagged it. You look at this coat and your first thought is 'buffalo hide'. A really stylish, well-tailored buffalo hide. Talk about warm! It was like walking around in a toaster oven. They were some of the first things I gave away when we got word we were transferred to South Carolina. Absolute rock-solid guaranteed lock I was never, ever going to need those coats south of the Mason-Dixon line.*

And then there was the temperature-rated footwear. I was not aware such things existed until I moved to Minnesota, and boy was I glad they did. Let's not forget the special socks, underwear, hats, gloves for wind, snow, ice, sleet, fog, and all the various combinations. Minnesota is a very clothing-intensive place. If you go there in any month other than July, you will need to pack lots and lots of extra items. Layer!! If you move there, buy a house with lots of closets and storage space - you will need it.

But I digress.

Snowplows and cold weather gear notwithstanding, I was born and raised and lived most of my first 30+ years in a warm weather climate, and not just any warm weather climate. I am a Native Texan, and when I say warm, I mean HOT, and not just your garden variety hot. We're talking preheat the (electric) oven, open it up and take a deep breath, singe your nasal hairs hot. People say if you live in a warm climate, your blood is thinner. I don't know if that is true or not but I think it is true in spirit - you just never get used to cold weather. In addition, based on my informal survey aka Common Sense, there are way more people moving south or traveling south to escape cold weather than there are those going in the other direction. Just ask Ohio and Long Island how many of their former residents now have a South Carolina zip code, and for good reason.

It was a struggle for me, getting through some of those long, cold winters. I remember the time I got an ice cream headache walking into a headwind from the parking lot into the grocery store. I think it was 4°F before wind chill calculation. Hey, at least it was above zero! Here's how crazy my thinking got after a few years up there: it wasn't cold as long as the temp was in double digits (above zero, of course). So as long as it was 10° or warmer, I could usually trick myself into bearing one more day of winter. It didn't take me long to get my thinking straight after we moved to South Carolina, where everyone knows anything below 50°F is cold. That reminds me of the time my folks (also Native Texans) were visiting and my mom kept asking me why the children we passed playing happily outside weren't wearing coats. It was probably about 50 outside, and to a Minnesotan, that's downright balmy!

Minnesota is a gorgeous place and I love my Minnesota friends. But after eight years there, I am convinced hell is not a place of fire and flame. Nope. It is icy and cold, dreary and overcast. The wind is always in your face, you are always one layer short, you've lost your only hat, and you are out of lip balm.

* Extra points if you actually know where the Mason-Dixon line is. Google if you must.