Monday in Linden Hills

I am on holiday and I am spending it close to home.   A good choice.  The afternoon weather has turned a bit overcast, but it doesn’t feel like heavy weather.  That’s almost a disappointment, actually.

I have the propensity to rally behind over-the-top weather.  If we’re experiencing a streak of snowy weather, I want more snow.   Heavy rain?  Why not some more?  Let’s go for a record.  Same for bitter cold, high winds, wild thunderstorms (a favorite), and dense fog.  Make it something to talk about.  That weather is best.

There’s something exciting about extremes.  In fact, other than stretches of heat, sunshine, and drought, I like extreme weather streaks.  And I only find heat and sunshine uninteresting because I lived in Tempe, Arizona, for ten years.  Droughts simply are not a good idea unless you live in a desert.

When I see the last bands of persistent heavy rain disappearing from a weather radar with only clear skies behind, I feel disappointed, almost a sense of loneliness.  So I hope for maybe just one more deluge before things calmer, more tepid days return.  Maybe some lightning and thunder, too.

Until then today has been nothing less than a decent one away from work.

Should I tell you about my walk in the woods?  Why not.

I notice from time to time deer tracks that appear to show a deer dragging a leg a little.  I have seen this before, not just recently, so I wonder if it is a way deer walk.  I doubt it.  More likely one of the deer is somewhat lame.  Although it is more common to see this dragging print in the snow.  Perhaps deer just get a little lazy and shuffle along like a bored kid impatiently trailing behind busy parents.

Not a warbler. It’s a cardinal.

The birds were out and so were the birders.  I chatted with two.  The first birder told me he was watching some sort of warbler.  I just nodded, pretending to know exactly what he was talking about.  He also corrected my owl identification.  I have been seeing — and hearing — barred owls, not great horned owls.  Although I do know for a fact that I have spotted great horned owls more than once in the woods and heard them in the back yard.

I took quite a few photos.  My camera works great!  But I need a tripod.  When on deep zoom, my ability to steady the camera doesn’t last long and with uncooperative birds that is proving to be a problem.  Still, I get a semi-decent picture from time to time.  As they say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

Going down the trail I noticed some bright white stuff on the ground beneath a tree.  I got excited.  It looked like egg shells.  Here was my chance, I thought, to find a hidden nest and earn some birder bragging rights.  Surely above these broken fragments of egg shell there was something special.  The pieces looked large, like potato chips. But no nest.  It made no sense until I got closer and saw that my discovery was a torn up styrofoam cup.

Barred Owl

Nonetheless, I think my instincts and logic deserve a compliment.  It could have been what I thought it was.

The second birder I encountered had a camera bigger than some beer coolers I own.  He had a tripod out of simple necessity.  (Have you ever tried to hold a beer cooler steady?  It isn’t easy.)  He told me he was photographing some bird nesting in a hollow tree.  Instinctively he seemed to know that the species would be irrelevant to me.

I did show him a couple of my pictures, however, and he seemed to be more than polite about them.  Feeling smug and chatty, in the whispering birder sort of way, I also commented on the “morning” warblers I learned about from the other birder.   When I came home and looked them up in my bird guide, I discovered they are mourning warblers.  I suspect the guy with the giant camera wouldn’t have noticed my mistake.

I do have a Sibley Guide to birds.  It is great, however I can’t really carry that in my back pocket.  I am thinking of getting a field guide, but I’m not sure if I really have the patience to stop and look up a bird.  And none of the serious birders seem to have a guide stuck in a back pocket.   I don’t want to look like a dork.

I wonder if I should get a photojournalist’s vest instead.

I’m not sure how I will finish my holiday.  Perhaps I will find time to embark on my Big Ambition.  I should probably check in at the bar, however, and make sure nothing has changed.  And I do have a couple clients I want to call.  Strangely, I tend to like making calls on my days off.  Those calls seem so unworklike.  I like that.

Whatever it is, I have to decide soon.  The afternoon is running fast and I have a very acute obsession with time, recently, especially the lack of it.  That Big Ambition can wait no longer.  To make something of a high art reference, these are indeed the days of our lives.

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Maybe It Is the Weather

I don’t seem to be getting much done and what I am doing doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.  I am reading a volume of Tacitus, for example, only because it happened to be available at my bookstore recently.  And when I am not doing that I am watching British period dramas featuring Joanne Froggatt.  Seems like such an odd mix of pre-occupations.

Maybe it is the weather.

I am a bad weather kind of guy.  If you cannot be a bad boy, be a bad weather boy.  I love the cold wet winds and heavy grey skies.  But maybe we’re getting just just a bit too much of it this spring.

Several days ago I took myself for a walk, an irresponsible absence from my day job, and composed a long and clever post about outdoor photography.  I never posted it.  I never finished it.  In fact — to tell the truth — I never started it.  I just took many pictures, pictures begging for attention and explanation.  Self-portraits, maybe, and each was more or less the same.

Interesting.

Even now I am writing only because I feel like I should…something about guilt, I think, and a sense of responsibility.  Plus I want a chance to admire a hat.  (See hat to left.  Where does a guy get a hat like Lord Grantham’s hat?)

And that’s all I can muster right now.

I cannot even pick on Republicans — as easy as that is — the fun isn’t in it for me now.  Besides some people do it so much better, proving that irony is nothing but a matter of perception if not perspective.  And no one wants to go to the bar with me.  That’s odd, I think.  Who could have anticipated that other people might enjoy my sober self more than myself?  Odd and dull.  Responsible, too.

So I take my found time and day dream of riding a bicycle down a Yorkshire lane.  It has to be the weather, hasn’t it?

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Snow Day?

Beautiful Dreary Day

If you enjoy bad weather as much as I enjoy bad weather, Minnesota has become a very disappointing state.  What used to be a climatological paradise is now pretty damn dull.  Like Hawaii.

Then, as if to rub it in, the weather and news people whine about any weather that isn’t precisely like Hawaii beach weather.  Correct that, let me be more precise:  They whine about weather that isn’t precisely like ideal Hawaii beach weather.

You live and work in Minnesota.  Cheer on the cold and snow, the sleet and wind, the rain and fog.  I’ll even cheer on a good heat wave once in a while, but that directs us to another problem.

Once upon a time we could say — without irony or being dishonest– something like “Don’t like the weather?  Wait a minute.  It will change.”  Can’t say that anymore.

Minnesota’s weather hell…no, it isn’t as exciting as that….Minnesota’s weather purgatory includes a whole lot of the same day after day after day.  The typical Sisyphean nightmare involves day after day of dry weather for months (what we once called winter) followed by months of hot humid weather in the summer, a season which has squeezed out both Minnesota Fall and Minnesota Spring.

It is a drag.  And it is sad.

Today A Good Stem Christie is a Rare Find

How sad, you say?  Well, weather-loving guys like me get excited about Winter Weather Advisories.  We get excited if there is even an advisory hinting that there might be an Advisory.  It gets worse.  When watching your favorite TV anchors squirm and roll their eyes about “bad hair days” is as bad as the weather gets, you’ve got problems.

First of all, you have people with a vanity insecurity complex delivering your news — which isn’t surprising, I suppose — these are the people who dropped out of drama school.  And, second, you have “weather” that occasionally amounts to some puffy gusts of wind.  We used to call that breezy and hoped it was enough to lift our kites when I was a boy.

When I was a boy…god, things have gone to pieces since then, haven’t they?  Kind of makes me wish I had gotten out of bed and done something like move to Mount Washington.

Ah well…I need to unwind and loosen up (obviously)…nothing but a ball of bitterness over here.  (Actually, I am having a lot of fun, but don’t tell anyone.)  I think I will go ski.  A quick run down a few hills followed by a moment at the ski chalet bar winking at snow bunnies should do the trick.

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Giddy as a School Boy…Snow!

Snow, fabulous snow!  I love snow!  In fact of all the things I enjoy, I can say I don’t think I have ever experienced my limit of snow.  Not once from my lips have ever been uttered:  Enough.

So today is a great day for Mr. Me.  I am a little tired — I didn’t sleep much last night, too excited — but there will be plenty of time for naps.  (I just awoke from one minutes ago.)  At the moment, the focus is snow, not sleep, anyway.

Much to be done, such as decide which heavy socks and which boots to wear.  Then the pants.  Do I break out the snow pants or just layer up a pair of cords?  (Great fun!)  Then the shirt and sweater…layering offers a lot of possibilities.  And I might even wear my new car coat, even though it isn’t really “snow gear” per se, I want to see how it handles in the weather.

Seriously…I can’t think of anything to complain about…

Wait.  There is one thing.  One thing indeed.  TV and radio news people who complain about the weather.  Come on, really?  It must be a course in journalism school.  Two common — too common — tropes that news people lay on us that drive me nuts and both are weather related.  The “bad hair day” and the groan whenever the weather isn’t sunny and mild.

If you live in Minnesota, it is going to get cloudy, cold, and wet every once in a while, at least once upon a time this was true.  Now, well, we’ve ruined the planet so it’s hard to say what the normal is anymore.  Nevertheless, whatever happens, suck it up and enjoy it.  If there is anything that is going to annoy the pants off me, it is weather whining.

Oh, and Black Ice.  Black ice IS NOT any ice that happens to form on the street or sidewalk.  News people like to hype things and tend to get overly melodramatic (another J school course, for certain) and in Minnesota it is the dreaded evil element known as Black Ice that gets the hyped attention.

Black ice really is the thin sheet of ice that can form in extremely cold conditions.  In Minnesota the real culprit is ice that forms where car exhaust freezes, usually at intersections where cars idle.  It is black primarily because it is thin and dirty, like the women I love, and it is especially dangerous because it is hard to see and unexpected.  Black ice can form on otherwise dry winter roads.  Whenever I see a news yokel stare into the camera with his or her best gloomy doom face and emphatically warn of “black ice” I want to punch someone.  So don’t do it, unless, of course, there really is black ice out there.

Ok, now back to enjoying the day…the beautiful snowy day!  I’ll have to get out and take some pictures.  It was too dark earlier and my camera phone isn’t doing so well these days.  (I need a new camera.)   Until then…I am getting geared up with what I have and going out to have some fun pushing people out of ditches and walking old ladies across the street.  Don’t be surprised if you see me recapping it all in a pub or two along the way either.

It is snowing!

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Fog, Stillness, and a Few Crows

(Editor’s Note:  Mr. Shane is on a break from politics, his walks in the woods, and other things that people read about here.  He is taking this break to enjoy time with his weaker thoughts and fantasies.  Mr. Shane’s regular posts will return sometime in the near future.)

It was a beautiful start to a great morning here in Linden Hills.  I still sleep with a bedroom window open, and when I cannot hear the ambient sound of the city in the distance I know the weather is heavy.  This morning it was fog.  Beautiful fog.

This wasn’t the densest fog I have seen, nonetheless it still the most weather we have had around here in weeks.  I took an early walk, but this was more of an indoors fog.  It simply looked better from a window with a pot of coffee brewing in the other room.

The fog blocked out the eastern shore of Lake Harriet — maybe the fog thickened over the lake — but I found myself staring out toward the lake anyway.  It was a good fog to think by.

And I wasn’t alone.  A pair of crows called to each other in a nearby tree.  I love crows and I cannot think of a better way to punctuate the silence of a foggy morning than the call of a crow.  So I was especially grateful for the crows.  A good omen, I think, a sign that today might be a good day.

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Discussing Lightning and Thunder

Lightning bolt! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With all the storms in the weekend forecast, why not talk about lightning and thunder?  Local WCCO-TV news ran a story on this yesterday, but in my humble opinion, it didn’t tell us much.  Some of it even missed the mark.  So here we go!

The question was asked:  Why does thunder crack and sometimes roll?

Many reasons determine the sound of thunder.  Distance is a key component.  As the sound waves from thunder travel toward you, they travel through different densities of air, different temperatures, and fade.  Lower tones travel the farthest.  You tend to hear the low rumble of distant thunder, therefore.

Also the length of a lightning bolt affects the sound you hear.  All thunder is the result of lightning and some lightning can travel over 60 miles.  You literally hear different parts of the lightning bolt at different times.  This can also give thunder and rumbling, rolling sound.  Different parts of the sound travels through different densities of air, for example.

Where you are in the storm matters, too.  Generally we hear the first strikes of thunder the loudest and clearest, especially if the thunder precedes any rainfall.  Without rain impeding the sound waves, the thunder tends to be more sharp and clear.

And if you happen to be right next to a strike, you get the loud crack that sounds instantaneous because the sound has very little distant to travel and distort.  You hear the loud crack.  If you still have your wits about you, you can often still hear the thunder roll away in the distance, too.

Two errors in the WCCO story.  One minor and the other a bit more signficant.

First, lightning and thunder rarely occurs in the winter not because there isn’t as much moisture in the air, but because there isn’t as much static electricity in the air.  The turbulent rising and falling of rain and especially ice in thunderstorms creates a charge (usually a negative charge) in the cloud that is discharged against a positive charge elsewhere, even in another cloud.   It is a matter of turbulent storm dynamics, not moisture, that causes lightning and thus thunder.  It does happen in the winter, but rarely, because the storm dynamics are not right.

May Storm Over Linden Hills

(I heard someone once say that lightning is rare in hurricanes, too.  Is that true?  I was told hurricanes expend energy in circulating winds that inhibit tall thunderstorm development.  I don’t know if this is true.  Does anyone from Florida or Louisiana read this post?  My dear friend Sandy can answer this for me.  I’ll get back to you.)

The second and more silly error is how the difference in time between a lightning strike and the sound of thunder was explained.  They explained that every five seconds counted after seeing a lightning flash and hearing thunder counted for a mile of distance, which is essentially accurate.  If you can count thirty seconds, for example, the storm is about 6 miles away.   The meteorologist said this was true because light travels five times faster than sound.  This is incorrect.   (Sorry, Mike Augustyniak…but it is ok.)

Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second or almost 700 million miles an hour.  (We learned this in school, right?)  Sound travels about 768 miles per hour, right?  I’m not a math wiz, but light travels many millions times faster than sound.  And if you think about it, it doesn’t matter anyway.  If light travels “five times” faster than sound, how would counting to five measure that.  Where is the constant?  If I counted really slowly and only got to three, would that mean light traveled three times faster than sound?  Nope.  The logic behind the incorrect answer is incorrect as well.

So there you have it, my little brush up on lightning and thunder.  Please reply with all corrections kindly.

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Minnesota Weather and Bridge Pilings

Exhibit 1

I don’t know what you call those structures that protect bridge pilings.  Maybe they don’t have a name.  (Although we do name everything, don’t we?  Especially engineers.)  But I am talking about those wedge-shaped structures designed to deflect ice, trees, and your runaway houseboat from hitting a bridge.

I mention it because I believe we have one of those protecting my part of Minnesota from any interesting weather.  Or maybe it is me.  Perhaps I am like Powder with strange powers to affect the physics of the world around me.  In my case it is a curse.  I love crazy weather and it seems to slip past me like a log floating in a gentle current.  I am a piling.  (I’ve been called much worse.)

Take a look at Exhibit 1.  This picture was taken almost a year ago, May 2011.  Storms were right on top of us in Linden Hills when…as if by magic…the storm split in two.  One half went south and this half went north.

Disappointing, but my weather life hasn’t always been such.

Once I was as close as you can get to a tornado without being killed.  It was a small one, but still took down some large trees.  Since I had never been in a tornado before I didn’t quite understand that swirling debris in a storm cloud hanging only feet above the tree tops might be serious.  Interestingly, I think, it wasn’t so much the visual cue as the audible one that told us we should jump into the house.  Tornadoes, even small ones, make quite a bit of noise.

We were in the back yard and when we came out to the front yard several large trees were down and the grass was pushed into crop circle patterns.  This was a storm passing through Long Lake, Minnesota, two years ago.

And two years ago I captured some fantastic pictures and video footage of a storm forming just north of Osakis, Minnesota, which would eventually become the tornado that hit Long Prairie on July 17, 2010.  That was a good year.  For storms.

Now I can’t even get a decent rain storm.  Forget about lightning and thunder.  I will be like prehistoric man huddled in a cave when that happens again, the freakishness of it all will cause me great stress.  And blizzards?  Myths.  Fables.  Things conjured up by the old timers to make us think they experienced more in the past than they do in the present.

All in all pretty quiet around these parts.  Tepid, timorous, teeny-weeny.  Dull, dull, dull.  Drives a man to drink more.  Might need a pith helmet. Maybe a nice chambray shirt and madras shorts.

Anyone want a lightly used weather radio?

(Yes, Weather Gods, I am indeed taunting you.)

Storm, Osakis, MN, July 17, 2010.

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Why I Can No Longer Watch Local News

I am mostly finished with local television news.  Just can’t watch it anymore.  I spend enough time trapped in inane conversations and watching the news has become something like being at a dull cocktail party.  The offenses to intelligence are many, but the recurring little annoyances offend the most.

Take the weather, for example.  It is de riguer that any person behind the news desk be a weather whiner.  I’m not talking about the weather reporters necessarily, but the news so-called news folks.  I live in Minnesota.  The weather here is varied and interesting and not always “nice.”  But the youngsters behind the weather desk whimper about clouds and cool breezes as if they were stationed on a wind-blown island off the coast of Antarctica.  You know…I get it.  Cool people like balmy spring holiday weather.  Great.  But you’re on the god damned television news in Minnesota.  Please shut up about the weather.

As a corollary, there is the offense of hyping up the weather to a level that would make Jim Cantore (it is all his fault) proud.  Keep in mind that this is 2011.  How many times have you heard a weather story punctuated with an observation like “we haven’t been that cold around here since 2008″?  Uh-huh.  Right.  Bad cocktail party chatter without the cute cocktail dress.  Or the drink.  (Although I’m starting.)

Guess Which One Does the Weather.

This kind of weather exaggeration brings attention to exaggeration and hyperbole generally.  Now I don’t want to make light of tragedy, but just yesterday I learned that the plane crash at a Reno, Nevada, race left a crater three feet deep and up to six feet wide.  The news anchor spelled it out slowly so you wouldn’t miss the significance:  “Three – Feet – Deep” and shook her head as she emphatically enunciated each word.

Three feet?  I’ve seen people fall off a bike and leave a bigger divot than that.

But most of us have a short attention span and before we have time to decide whether a three foot ”mpact crater is significant or not we’re off to the next story, probably something about a panda eating ice cream or something.  This is when the news can actually be fun.  More often than not your newscaster might forget to turn off the sturm and drang gravitas and kick in the happy smiley story persona.  Of course it might not be good news for the panda with the ice cream, but we’re supposed to be happy.  Smile.

And can I say this…can I just say this and hope it gets out there to the news and weather people in places like Minnesota?  Ice on freeways is not all black ice!  Black ice is the bete noir of our winters.  Grandmother slips on sidewalk.  Black ice.  Car slides off road.  Black ice.  Truck slams school bus.  Black ice.  Technically, black ice occurs in extreme cold conditions when car exhaust freezes to road surfaces, usually at places like intersections where cars idle.  (That’s my definition.)  But “Black Ice” is so much more dramatic than run of the mill “icy” or “slippery” so…naturally…in the melodramatic world of television news all ice is black ice.

Finally — I know I don’t have to bring it up — but news people act as if we really think they really care about us.  I can guess most of my local news people have parents, for example; I don’t need to see my evening news anchor’s mom teaching me how to bake lasagna.  I suppose these are so called human interest elements and cheer up people, make the smile, but I prefer more John McLaughlin and less Rosie O’Donnell in my newscast.

Jim Cantore

Oh cripes…one more thing…hair.  Did I mention hair?  On windy days we lose a good five minutes of every news cast to pointless news anchor banter about how difficult it is to keep news anchor hair in place.  (Jim Cantore doesn’t fret over this.  He’s a good man that way.)

Ok, I’m done.  And look at that!  An entire post and not one deserving shot at the backward ignorance of the GOP.  See, I can keep my blatantly partisan and all-too-correct politics out of these things.  I’m just becoming a grump instead.

Take a Break. No OBL Here.

Marsh on Des Moines Lake.

I am getting ready to go out and play salesman and it is a beautiful day for make believe.

Sunny, bright, and tad warmer than we have enjoyed in many days.  But I am not at all opposed to the opposite.  This weekend the weather delivered a wet cold slop of a Saturday to the Webb Lake, Wisconsin, area, but I hung outside with a beer and roaring bonfire anyway.  I also got a picture or two.

I’m not sure what I like about this photo of a marsh on the edge of Des Moines Lake, but I like it.  Perhaps I like the layers of depth.  I don’t know.  It raises an interesting thought, though.  Suppose I overrate photos I take because I don’t necessarily see the photograph as much as the photograph restores images and memories of personal experience.

This photo does not capture the beauty of the marsh.  The colors are not as sharp as they should be, but more importantly a picture doesn’t capture the soft noise of rain drops plunking into the still water nor does a photo capture the muddy sweet smell of the air.  (Why does mud smell so clean?)

It rained most of the day this past Saturday and it was cold.  The day was quite nice, however.  Perhaps getting out of the city is the key to enjoying bad weather.  I often think so.

Well, time to get out to see if I can convince the naively skeptical that they should advertise their business.  It might be time for an advertising primer.  “Advertising:  Why We Do It.”  Something like that.  Until then, I am off on my Quixotic quest.  I hope faithful Rocinante is eager to go.  We have some miles to cover today.

Minnesota Blizzard Pt. 1

This is the stuff!  I moved back to Minnesota from Arizona to get more weather like this. 

Linden Hills, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

At one time I was a bit of a weather whiner.  You know…not sunny enough, not warm enough…but then I moved to Arizona and released my barely-latent respect for weather’s variety.

I’ll admit that I knew already as a boy that I liked bad weather.  Walking along the river — before they had namby-pamby park trails — was most enjoyable when the weather was raw.  It is an enjoyable time to be outdoors.  It is much more sublime, solitary, nice. 

I went outdoors for a short time today.  I tried to get some photos, but they did not turn out all that well.  I might have found the limit to my handy camera phone.  A great time outside nonetheless. 

Most of my winter enjoyment today has been indoors, however; so even if you are that odd person who hates cold and snow, there is no reason to let today’s weather get you down.  Just plan right and set your mind to good things.

First, the joys of winter begin with food, especially when a dangerous storm rages outside.  If you plan to venture into the dangerous winter weather, might as well eat what you like…what if you collapse in a snow bank?  (Might as well eat what you like any time, good or bad!  Am I right?)   My choice is a simple one:  Homemade hashbrowns (what other kind is there?), toast and jam, and juice.   A good breakfast or a hearty brunch and you’re ready, you’re set. 

Simple Winter Storm Breakfast.

But pick the right time to go out into the weather because there’s so much to do inside.

Who does not love a good reason to stay in with books, newspapers, and hot food?  Cozy defined.  People in warm climates miss the opportunity to hunker down and enjoy snowy solitude.  Think of how lucky we are to enjoy storms like these.  For my way of thinking, the only way this could be better would be in a lakeside cabin up north. 

It is true, however, that city life is fantastic during a strong storm.  A little difficult getting around — true — but worth the effort.  You meet both your neighbors and strangers more easily in weather like this.  And that hot food, such an important part of enjoying a winter storm, tastes so much better after fighting wind-driven snow to enjoy it in a little restaurant.   No need to comment on the importance of drinks, is there?  De rigueur.

I will be staying in with a few books and perhaps the radio tonight.  My advice to others planning to do the same, especially the uninitiated, is steer clear of movies, especially any movie made within the last 30 years, and never allow video games, whatever those are…it is the wrong aesthetic.  You want a pot of hot coffee steaming somewhere even if you won’t drink it and a good stiff drink nearby, too.  You can at least sip at that.  Wintery naps are the best naps and drinks much neglected by us today help with naptime.  (Think brown spirits.  Whiskey, not vodka, for example.  I always nap better on dark spirits.  Even Dark Grace.)

I better end this blog entry before I end up buying the Complete Singers and Songwriters Collection from Time-Life Music.  Yes, my television is on…and I’m not sure that fits the mood I am looking for tonight.  Ironically, Singers and Songwriters is making me nostalgic for summers at Northview Pool in South St. Paul circa 1973 and I wasn’t there enjoying the snow.  Stay focused!  There’s a blizzard out there…

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