On Sunday we had our first taste of snow here in Paradise. Only couple of inches fell, which is a good thing. This way we get the lovely landscape change without the hassles associated with larger amounts.
First warm day it will all melt away, and that’s okay too.
And look at this … how gorgeous! The combination of the snow/rain combination coupled with no wind at all has left windrows of snow along each branch.
The cliché that older people have nothing to say to each other than to talk about the weather has some truth in it. And a recurring theme is that there was much more snow when they were kids than there is now. For some locations this is true, although the reductions are modest, at best.
Conversations like this: “When I was a kid I remember the snow being so deep that we built igloos just by digging into the side of a drift. The snowdrifts along the road to our house were taller than I was.”
Well, I found the most amazing website dealing with snowfall*, going back to 1900, and I think that it explains a lot of things. For instance in Minneapolis, my old home town, the average yearly snowfall for the period 1981-2019 was 53.4 inches. The least amount fell in 1931, when only 14.2 inches fell. The greatest amount fell in 1983, and it was 98.6 inches.
If I were a kid in the 80s in Minneapolis what I would remember was that astounding year when 98 inches fell, forgetting about all the so-so years before and after. That’s how memory works. We recall the outliers and make them the norm until some know-it-all comes up with a chart than tells the truth.
Now comes the bragging, done by a licensed braggart. Here is a number to cause ooooohs and ahhhhhs to be uttered.
The record for total seasonal snowfall in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is 390.4 inches, set during the winter of 1978-79. This record was set in the Keweenaw Peninsula, which is known for heavy snowfall due to its location.
AI query
In the winter of 1978-79 I was living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, on the Keweenaw Peninsula, to be exact. And I shoveled every last one of those inches.
We lived in a one-story house which required that someone climb onto the roof periodically to remove the snow lest the weight literally break through into the house. By February, when I stood on the roof and shoveled the snow into the back yard, I was throwing snow UP! The pile was already taller than the house. And when I … I could go on but that’s enough about this topic.
*The chart is for US cities only. We’re a parochial bunch here in the States. We get crazy only about our own weather.
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I went to the Apple app store today to do a little shopping (for free stuff because I am incurably cheap) and failed. What I wanted for my Mac was available only for my phone or an iPad. But it started me reminiscing about the early days of personal computing. At least of my early days, which began with the first Macintosh, in 1984.
Once I had purchased the machine, along with the very few pieces of software that it could run, I buried myself in finding out just what it could do. I had prepared myself to be amazed and I was.
Fast forward to wanting to have more … more … more information so I joined the tiny MUG (Mac User Group) in our small town. There were only five of us, and one member was the states attorney for our district.Why do I single him out? Because he had already acquired a considerable library of pirated software which he was willing to demonstrate and share with any in the group who were as open to intellectual theft as he was. The irony of a member of the justice system being an accomplished intellectual thief was noted but not discussed.
This all happened at a time when the total library of software that a Mac could run could easily be owned by any individual who had a few extra bucks around to spend. But it grew so rapidly that within a year our user group disbanded. Our interests now diverged because each of us had a flurry of apps to choose from, and they were being developed at a pace that was impossible to keep up with.
But the fun that we had when all was new and exciting … I can remember the feeling even now.
BTW, this all occurred in the village of Yankton South Dakota. It wasn’t the only time that an officer of the law was involved in illegal activity had come to my attention. During the period when I was looking for a place to relocate to from Michigan, I was watching television in my motel room on a visit to Yankton, and one news item was of a group of men who had been arrested for operating an illegal poker game from a motel somewhere in the state. One of those men arrested was the South Dakota state attorney general.
Hmmmm, I thought, that’s colorful. Then I heard about a pair of bank robbers who were apprehended a few doors down from that very bank where they were already spending the loot. In a bar. On beers. But the best SD crime story of all at that time was the discovery of a large jet cargo plane in a field along the interstate. It had landed and been abandoned. Why, you might ask would a huge cargo plane in a beanfield be of special interest? Because what this particular aircraft was filled with was marijuana.
How could I miss the opportunity to live in a state with such a fine Wild West litany of crime stories coming at you every day? I packed up my family and my books and moved to South Dakota forthwith.
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I will admit that the extensive library of cat and dog videos has provided laughs for yours truly, but this one is a little more interesting. It suggests very different processing by cats and dogs. Is this true? Anybody know?
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It’s the second of December and we’re still not at war with Venezuela. I have no idea what the Cluck administration is waiting for, because I have my bags packed and am waiting for the national call-up of retired and seniorized medical personnel to begin.
President Donald Cluck wearing his war camouflage and showing his willingness to lead the charge up the Venezuelan beaches. However, apparently his bone spurs have acted up again, so he will be there in spirit when our armed forces go ashore, rather than in person.
It has been years now that I have had trouble sleeping because of Venezuela. Not that the people of the country had ever done me harm of any kind … I just didn’t like having that country out there existing without proper American meddling. It vexed me. Thank heaven that President Cluck has a clear vision of the threat that Venezuela poses, and was only waiting until he could round up a bunch of ships and planes and stuff and also had a Secretary of War and Dim Offensives who could be counted on to do his bidding.
Secretary of War and Dim Offensives Pete Hegseth at work on battle plans for the upcoming war with Venezuela.
But no matter. I am sitting by the door with my Google Spanish-English Translator in my hand. I have my electronically-sound-boosted stethoscope around my neck. I have a month’s worth of my blood pressure pills, my anti-stroke pills, my cholesterol-reducing pills, and my Metamucil safely stowed in my duffel bag. I checked and was disappointed to learn that there isn’t a Golden Age version of the Air Force uniform for those of us who are being recalled, one with all Velcro closures. But hey, it wouldn’t be a war without hardships, would it?
Now where is that darn transport, anyway?
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A brief note about those little round images over there on the right side of the page. Those are examples of my button-crafting, done in support of our Indivisible group here in Montrose County. My fervent hope is that each one of them will go on to annoy the very hell out of the opposition.
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And a brief note about today’s music. I like many of the tunes that the Steve Miller Band recorded. They put out smart pop-rock as far as I am concerned. But I had a good friend who used to tell me that this affection of mine for the band meant:
- that my brain had already turned into pablum (this was twenty-five years ago)
- that it showed that I had no taste at all in music
- that having a handful of SM songs in my library put my immortal soul at risk
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Little Home In The Valley 