Another brutal shot of cold air came slugging into New England on Monday. The temperature was still relatively mild just before dawn at 22.8°, but headed down as an arctic front passed through. It was interesting how the flurries became squalls to our north and to our south, but we lucked out and had just a few flakes wandering about. It was enough to make Monday a day-with-snow, but not anything I had to deal with, even with a broom, which was a good thing, as I was stiff and sore from snow-blowing on Sinday, and still had some porches and paths to clear.
Temperatures had fallen to 15° by noon and were down into the single digits in the afternoon, with a gusty wind whipping up clouds of stinging powder, despite the fact there was just enough moisture in the Sunday morning snow to form the thinnest of crusts. The snow has been amazingly powdery this winter, and we have had no crust atop the snow to speak of. Sunday only gave us a quarter inch of crust, and then there was enough powder after the brief spell of sticky snow to allow the typical wraiths to swirl and twist, dancing wildly across the pasture and then charging away down the street, despite the brilliant sunshine from a February sun climbing up toward the regions it crosses in March.
I did not have to drive my gang-of-six to kindergarten, as the schools have let out for a week of vacation. This is a “Disturbance in the Force” [Star Wars] as it makes chaos of the routine. Traditionally Massachusetts would have its vacation one week, and folk in New hampshire would work like crazy that week because lots of people used the vacation to come north to ski. Then New Hampshire would collapse as Massachusetts went back to work the following week, and have its vacation the week after Massachusetts.
This is one of those traditions that makes less and less sense as time goes by. No longer is every hill in New Hampshire topped by a rope-tow run by an old Model T engine, which was once all it took to be a “ski-area”. Lawsuits and Insurance have put all the small family-owned ski-areas out of business, and all that is left are the larger resorts, which charge so much for skiing it is actually cheaper for a young family to fly down to Florida and go to Disney World. Also many near the border now commute down to Massachusetts to work, and in the case of teachers they have a vacation at their school a week before their children have vacation in their New Hampshire School.
My wife and I didn’t have the problems of modern parents, as we raised our five kids. We didn’t have to worry about ski-areas or Florida, for we couldn’t afford that, and instead took our kids sledding or skating or ice-fishing, (and I coached a basketball team for my boys that tended to play during vacations, as well). As a landscaper and handyman, winter was a time of little business for me, and I usually had to find some night-shift job at a factory, but this still meant I was around during the day. Meanwhile my wife alternated between being a stay-at-home Mom and the recreation-director of some nearby facility either focused on the first or second childhood. We got by, however the idea of spending a hundred a week on gasoline, or two hundred a week on Childcare, would have struck us as absurd. It defeated the whole reason for getting a job, (using up the money you made), and deprived you of time with your kids as well.
For many modern parents vacation is THE time, the ONLY time, they get to have with their kids, and I can’t blame them for wanting it to be special and involve some fabulous trip to Florida. However in some cases it is the same parents who tell me they can’t afford to pay their Childcare bill on time. Hmm. (Perhaps grandparents in Florida have taken pity, and paid for the airfare, because they want to see their grandchildren.)
In any case it makes a complete shambles of order at our Childcare. Children need wildness, but also have a craving for order and routine, and vacation is disorder. The chemistry of the Childcare’s mini-society is utterly altered, as children who usually go to school stay all day, and others who usually stay all day are in Florida.
Furthermore the winter has been so hard, and involved so many “snow days”, it is not as if the kids have been spending too much time at school. The routine was a shambles to begin with, and vacation is just a shambles on top of a shambles. But never mind that. As this winter has gone on it has seemed more and more like a boxing match, where you have to roll with the punches.
To return to the subject, I did not have to drive my gang-of-six to kindergarten. Therefore I scheduled a yearly physical at my doctor’s office.
To depart from the topic, the way that doctor’s focus on physical reality annoys me. My father was a surgeon and my mother was a nurse, and perhaps I got an overdose of that focus, and responded by retreating into the landscape of an air-head. After all, of all artists, writers are the most air-headed. Painters at least employ the physical sense of vision, and composers at least employ the physical sense of hearing. Writers employ no sense, yet make sense. (I could describe a lemon and make your mouth water, without a lemon in sight.)
In any case, because I spend so much of my time in a non-physical world, winter really annoys me. It is always hitting me with stinging snow on bitter blasts, and forcing me to deal with boring physical stuff. In the same manner, my doctor wants to force me to deal with even more annoying physical stuff. For some reason he wants to look around inside my colon. This will mean I have to miss two full days of work, one of which I will basically spend sitting on a toilet crapping out diarrhea. All I can say is, doctors sure have a weird idea of what is good for you.
To return to the topic, the winds were howling and the snow was sifting and swirling and the weather bureau was saying frostbite could set in as swiftly as 30 minutes, and the children were lobbying to stay indoors. One bossy little girl had even decided who would stay in and who would go out. I walked in and stated everyone was going out, for at least 29 minutes. The little girl shot me a baleful glance.
In actual fact, dressing to go out is not an annoying task that tries the patience of both children and myself. It is, in and of itself, an “activity” which “promotes learning” and “stimulates the development of self-reliant skills.” (You learn to talk this jargon, when you work this business.)
Anyway, to go out in barbaric weather involves mental stuff that is more important than physical reality. Don’t get me wrong, I keep a sharp eye out for the slightest hint of frostbite. I also keep an eye out for the benefits being outside pours upon children, and adults as well, if they only dare step out the door.
Not a single child wanted to go in after 29 minutes. In fact the little girl who shot me the baleful glance about going out was annoyed at her friend, who wanted to go in after 50 minutes.
A member of my staff took the more delicate children in as I stayed out with the hardier ones, but one by one kids headed in, until I was at last out with one little boy who was even more hardy than I was. He was having a blast, sledding down cliffs I usually would forbid children from sledding upon, but which are now quite safe because any crashing plunks the crasher into a vast pillow of deep snow. Despite powdering his face with snow over and over, (the powder melts, and wet skin increases the danger of frostbite), his cheeks remained a cheerful and healthy pink, without the mottled, purplish look that tells me it is time to go in. We only eventually went in because I myself was feeling a bit mottled and purplish.
I might have been shuddering a bit, as we came in, but that particular boy was surprisingly serene, especially when you consider he is often a hellion indoors. To me it is one more example of how people who focus on physical reality, and won’t even allow children outside when temperatures dip below 20°, are completely missing a higher reality.
The physical reality got nasty as night fell and the core of the cold came down. 
As the cold suppressed a storm to our south and shunted it out to sea, temperatures dropped to the lowest levels of the winter, reaching -10.8° (-23.8° Celsius) around midnight, before the wind dropped and began shifting more to the west, and temperatures rose slightly to -9° at sunrise.
Today was a cold day, with lots of high clouds in a cold, blue sky, but less wind. I built a fire out in the pasture for the sledding children to warm by, and had to admit it looked downright odd, as it was down in a crater, four feet below the surface of the snow. I had to to careful kids didn’t fall into the fire, as they decended to warm by it, and carved a sort of staircase in the snow to make their decent less treacherous.
However the oddest thing about today was to hear a buzz of gossip about the city of Boston holding a gathering of ministers from different faiths to pray for help, regarding the problems snow was causing. This shocked me. It sounds more like the mid 1800’s, when Boston was the most prudish city in the nation, and the center of the “Bible Belt” of that time. I had thought Boston had now become too “secular” for such an event. Curiosity had me attempt to learn more.
As far as I can tell, the gossip is based about this video.
While I must admit it is a good thing for clergy to unite, rather than backbite, and for them to speak of neighbors loving neighbors, and brotherhood, and how “We are all in this together,” but….didn’t they forget something? I mean, um, err, isn’t prayer suppose to involve this fellow called, um, err, “God”???
It seems yet another case where the physical unity of people and peoples ignores something sublimely non-physical. In any case, the prayer didn’t work. An interesting little storm is charging up the coast, and seems, somewhat incredibly, aiming to hit Boston with up to five inches, as I, only seventy miles away, get a few lone flakes.
As this snow headed north to teach preachers in Boston to mention God more, when they pray, we got some southerly air, and a flurry of snow at 11:00 PM. (That keeps Tuesday from being a snow-less day.) Temperatures had fallen to 7.9°, but after the flurry arose to 9.4°. We had a lighter flurry just after midnight (which keeps Wednesday from being a snow-less day) but now the stars are back out and temperatures have slipped back to 8.6°
The map doesn’t look all that threatening, in terms of snow, but it looks like another arctic blast is charging our way, behind that cold front crossing the Great Lakes.
Now it is time to quit attending to physical reality, and attend to dream-land instead. I’m only up because my left shoulder is so sore I can’;t sleep on it. That is another “healthy” thing my doctor did to me.
He advised I have a anti-pneumonia vaccine. Actually there is no germ called “pneumonia”, and the vaccine is for various types of staphylococcus bacteria. You used to be able to kill those bugs with antibiotics, but they have grown resistant. In any case, I don’t have pneumonia, but have one heck of a sore left shoulder.
I’ll try to update this post, with information about how much snow Boston got ( if any ), tomorrow, but I must confess I’m getting tired of physical reality. Rather than update this post I may subject you to my “art”. I have a craving to finish up a chapter of my novel. If I find time, you’ll be faced with that, rather than an update. I apologize in advance.
UPDATE —Another jab at Boston—
The snow clipped them with another two inches of snow, as we got the barest dusting. The edge of the snow was remarkably sharp.
It is not as if 2 inches will close down Boston, but it keeps melting at bay. The bright March-like sunshine would melt away 2 inches a day, and the snow banks would gradually shrink, but the snow keeps coming. It is like jab after jab in a boxing match, but what all dread is the uppercut. That would be a final storm where the features in the southern stream and northern stream “phase” into a big storm. Rain would cause all sorts of problems, but a big nor’easter would utterly close the city down. I think things would basically grind to a halt until thaw did some major melting.
Actually the best site for seeing Boston’s trauma documented has been Joseph D’Aleo’s site at Weatherbell. It is well worth the price of a cup of coffee a day it costs me each day. One of the most eye-opening features has been this list of Boston’s statistics, updated regularly, and showing them get an amazing 8 feet of snow over the past month. (The red print is what is predicted, but hasn’t happened yet.) (Click to enlarge and clarify.)
The above chart shows they will actually get a thaw down there today, and that I had better get things done in the sun, before bitter blasts return. Actually I have a rather easy day, and may actually have time to think and write a little.
In any case, we are starting to look west to the next features in the northern and southern blasts, so I guess this “snow-event” is over. Up here it won’t look all that impressive, though it did give us our coldest temperatures of the winter. All we got was a dusting.
The radar does show both a southern branch and northern branch feature, but the forecast shows no “phasing”.
A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT THOUGHT’S POWER, AND PRAYER
Because writers spend so much time in a non-physical reality they tend to stumble into or through situations which strike some as being slightly “occult”. Back before the word “telepathy” was invented Mark Twain wrote a couple of works about what he called “Mental Telegraphy”, involving what he called “crossing letters” (among other things). He noticed, over and over, that when he sat down to write someone for the first time in months, and even years, that person would also be sitting down to write, and their letters would cross in the mail. He wondered about controlling this ability, but beyond dabbling a little he tended to feel it was something he could only observe, and not use like people used the newfangled invention called the “telephone”.
I’ve noticed the same coincidences, and it has given me the sense our thoughts do have some sort of power. If this is a truth, then prayer has power, but also wishes have power, and desires have power. All people are walking about transmitting thoughts which form an incredible jumble in the psychic atmosphere, and make me think that a true psychic would get a headache, for it would be like listening to a radio tuned into hundreds of stations at once. (Or perhaps it would be sheer static).
If all these thoughts do have power, the various powers likely are in conflict. For example during the Superbowl half the fans are praying for one side and half for the other, creating the chaos we watch and enjoy and call “football”.
In like manner, all people’s various wishes may indeed control the weather, but because they are conflicting they create chaos. The Baptists are praying for a sunny church picnic as the Methodists pray for rain on their corn, and the thoughts collide and create a tornado.
The weather would be far better if people could agree, but people don’t. Or that is how I explain the fact it often rains on picnics despite prayers for sun.
It is only the purest Atheists and Saints that arrive at the only solution to this chronic chaos I can envision. In the case of an Atheist there is no belief that prayer has any effect, so they accept reality as it is given. In the case of a Saint they say, “Not my will but Thy will be done,” so they too are accepting the Creation as the Creator created it.
If the general mass of humanity put the Creator first, and prayed for whatever weather He wants, we’d be living in a Garden of Eden, but the Creator didn’t create us that way. He must have a fondness for chaos, or at least be indulgent towards roughly seven billion children running around creating tornadoes out of serenity.
In any case, the people of New England are getting so fed up with winter there may be a slight chance a partial unity is occurring, and the power of all thoughts are deflecting storms south and out to sea. (On the other hand, perhaps the deep snow-cover is creating an increase in the high pressure over New England.)
Sunrise's Swansong 