I Stand By My Prediction
The other day we were visited by a long time friend, a lady, on the occasion of not having seen each other for several years, and even more on the occasion of her having had her book published by the press of the University of Virginia. She very graciously gave us one of the 10 free copies that she was given to hand out to her friends.
It is a handsome and substantial book, the result of years of her labors, which earlier had resulted in her getting her Ph.D, and this is a version of her successful dissertation. Popularized, I suppose, to the degree that any doctoral dissertation can be popularized.
Still, I'm worried about what I will say the next time she sees me and asks if I have read her book, and I will have to admit that I have only lightly scanned it and that's all. The reason is that the subject matter is intensely uncomfortable to me. It is about stuff that I have already known something about for decades. The book's story centers on one of the most egregious "bad checks" that Martin Luther King Jr. talked about, and that have been handed out to people of my color for centuries -- the kind of promissory notes by the American Majority that too often are returned to us from the bank, unredeemed and stamped "Insufficient Funds." My friend's book is about the Reconstruction in North Carolina, and we all know how that came out for those of us of slave ancestry.
But that's not what I wanted to post about today. I wanted instead only to mention that this lady and I were talking about this winter that is now at hand, and my expectation that weather-wise, it's going to be just as bad as the one last year. This lady disagreed, because she had been assured by the locals that this winter is going to be milder than last year.
I spent a great deal of my time outdoors this summer and then the fall being haunted by memories of the several heavy and long-lasting snowfalls of last year. I could still experience that ice and snow as if it still lay several inches deep in various spots, especially at the feet of the steps into my workshop, and some heavy autumn rains put me in mind of all the digging I had had to do with hoe and shovel through the snow on our long, uphill driveway that last winter covered our property for months.
This winter they've already had several big snowstorms in the west and midwest, and yesterday 17 inches of snow collapsed the roof of the Metrodome in Minneapolis, apparently a big stadium where pro football players of wealth but very little taste meet for well-attended sessions of mainly serious head-butting. And that storm, as usual, is heading east.
And this morning, on top of a day of cold rain that after nightfall left everything here with a coating of thin ice, followed by a surprise one inch of snow on the ground this morning in a temp that is predicted to rise only to just below freezing, after a bunch already of weeks of hard freezes, I see these things as harbingers of much worse to come, and so I still stand by my feeling.
You know. of course, that though I would not have believed it earlier, we older folk lose, among other things, our former toleration for such foolishness as being cold and clearing snow..
It is a handsome and substantial book, the result of years of her labors, which earlier had resulted in her getting her Ph.D, and this is a version of her successful dissertation. Popularized, I suppose, to the degree that any doctoral dissertation can be popularized.
Still, I'm worried about what I will say the next time she sees me and asks if I have read her book, and I will have to admit that I have only lightly scanned it and that's all. The reason is that the subject matter is intensely uncomfortable to me. It is about stuff that I have already known something about for decades. The book's story centers on one of the most egregious "bad checks" that Martin Luther King Jr. talked about, and that have been handed out to people of my color for centuries -- the kind of promissory notes by the American Majority that too often are returned to us from the bank, unredeemed and stamped "Insufficient Funds." My friend's book is about the Reconstruction in North Carolina, and we all know how that came out for those of us of slave ancestry.
But that's not what I wanted to post about today. I wanted instead only to mention that this lady and I were talking about this winter that is now at hand, and my expectation that weather-wise, it's going to be just as bad as the one last year. This lady disagreed, because she had been assured by the locals that this winter is going to be milder than last year.
I spent a great deal of my time outdoors this summer and then the fall being haunted by memories of the several heavy and long-lasting snowfalls of last year. I could still experience that ice and snow as if it still lay several inches deep in various spots, especially at the feet of the steps into my workshop, and some heavy autumn rains put me in mind of all the digging I had had to do with hoe and shovel through the snow on our long, uphill driveway that last winter covered our property for months.
This winter they've already had several big snowstorms in the west and midwest, and yesterday 17 inches of snow collapsed the roof of the Metrodome in Minneapolis, apparently a big stadium where pro football players of wealth but very little taste meet for well-attended sessions of mainly serious head-butting. And that storm, as usual, is heading east.
And this morning, on top of a day of cold rain that after nightfall left everything here with a coating of thin ice, followed by a surprise one inch of snow on the ground this morning in a temp that is predicted to rise only to just below freezing, after a bunch already of weeks of hard freezes, I see these things as harbingers of much worse to come, and so I still stand by my feeling.
You know. of course, that though I would not have believed it earlier, we older folk lose, among other things, our former toleration for such foolishness as being cold and clearing snow..
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 10:32 AM
1 Comments:
After a very mild November for us (cheapest electric bill in a couple of years because we ran no AC or heat) I thought we were headed for a mild winter. HA! Sadly I believe you are correct though.
I am not hating the cold as much as normal though. I don't know if it is the extra 20 pounds I am carrying or what is politely called "The Change" but 30 degrees is much more refreshing than it ever had been!
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