Winter: how it's going

WINTER: HOW IT STARTED

This winter started off with a bang, or, should I say, a slow slog through the snowstorm on Dec 21st. 

Our lemon cypress Christmas tree

We had a lovely Christmas & Hanukkah with all of the Common Household [Adult] Children visiting.  Then an equally lovely visit with extended family after Christmas, during which only some of us got sick.  

The full hanukkiah on Jan 1, 2025

WINTER: HOW IT'S GOING

It’s been c-c-cold since then.  I don’t like being cold, but I am actually grateful. It’s supposed to be cold outside right now.  And, as Adam Gopnik wrote in Winter: Five Windows on the Season (the best essays ever written about winter, in my opinion), we can appreciate winter when we have central heating.  

…nobody knows the names of the men who, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, invented central heating, and particularly steam heating by radiating pipes. Let us name them now: they included Thomas Tredgold and H. R. Robertson and an immigrant genius of central heating, the French engineer F. W. Chabannes (a Russian,

Franz San Galli, would soon invent the radiator).

After that first official day of winter, we haven’t had much snow all at once; it came in little spurts.  Yet the Snow Fairy, (that is, me) quickly tired of shoveling.  For several days in a row, I just shoveled one side of the front walk, and only did that so I could get the mail.  There was nothing good in the mail.

The Snow Fairy's lazy shoveling of
the driveway was not appreciated
enough, in my opinion. I mean, the
snow was not that deep in the first place.

This morning there was about an inch of new snow, and because the Common Household Husband shoveled the driveway, I had enough energy to fully shovel the front walk.  The CHH remarked, “Oh, look! It’s bilateral shoveling of the walk this time!”  

I shoveled it completely.
But it's just going to snow some more.

Now we’ve got a total of 4 inches of snow on the deck, where no one shovels and no creatures walk through.

I have been half-heartedly going through the 10-inch high pile of papers that, in September, I dumped from my desk into a box, and didn’t look at until now.  I’ve reduced it to about 7 inches.  Still higher than the height of the snow!  In the process I found an important and beneficial church communication; in August there was something good in the mail, but I didn’t know it.  The 3 inches of papers also contained some very sad notes from after my aunt died. 

This coming Monday is National Clean Off Your Desk day.  If and when that happens, it will be cause for celebration in the Common Household.  

I have begun to ease into reading national news again, although there is not much encouraging to be seen there.  And I have ventured to call my US Senators a few times, not because I expect to change their minds, but because the right thing to do is to speak truth to power.  And because I believe it is important to keep our “citizenship muscles” in shape as best we can.  Politically I feel like we are now in an “always winter, never Christmas” era.  

But let’s not succumb to the temptation of the turkish delight. There is real and important political work to be done at the local political level this year.  We have municipal, school board, and judicial elections.  And the positions of Judge of Election and Inspector of Election will be on the ballot.  

At church they once again passed out “star words” on the Sunday just before Epiphany.  I have doubts about it as a spiritual practice, but it works for some people, and as I have said before, I like shiny things.  The word I received this year is “Rest”.  Seems like the wrong time for me to rest, as I have umpteen church stats to compile before February, an estate to wrap up, and local elections, not to mention paid work.  But maybe it’s another meaning of “Rest” as in, the remainder.  Those who have been set aside, who are not getting attention. 

Here’s hoping the rest of winter is not too cold, and it only snows when we all can be inside looking out of the window of heated dwellings. Now, to the rest of that stack of papers.

Remind me later to tell you about
this recipe, which has become
a favorite of the entire family.