Herbalicious collection of desiccated forest scrapings lying in a bowl on your grandma's sideboard, or an unstructured mishmash of things I meant to post here over the last few days, but never got around to? Both, in fact.


1-14.2 

When I took this photo last Thursday evening, the area was in the short, sweet midst of a heat wave that could only be described as "freakish". By that, I mean that it was still around 70 when I snapped this shot (it doesn't really capture the August-night feel in the air), and remained in the mid-60s even past midnight. There is "a mild winter day" and then there is "what the f*** is going on here?" - mark this down in column B. It's just fine if you're from some more tropical part of this great nation of ours, like San Diego or Montego Bay or Cancun, but as a northern boy used to northern winters (ok, Connecticut isn't Saskatchewan, or even northern Minnesota, but we do spend a lot of the winter looking up at the freezing mark) I wasn't merely skeptical. Even if Ohio is Northern Lite, I was worried.

For a day or two, kids pranced around town in shorts and t-shirts, not because they were industrial-listening teenage hardnuts who wouldn't wuss out and cover their chubby, pale shins if they were summitting K2, but because, well, it was 70 degrees out. You wanted to eat outside, drink outside, lounge in the grass, do all those things everyone said "goodbye, see you in April" to shortly after Halloween here in this part of the world (folks in Southern California, you can just skip down to the next section now. You wouldn't understand). Here was a break, and you wanted to lighten up and be happy, in that summery, put-the-top-down, drink-Pimms-by-the-riverside kind of way. If they carried Pimms in Appalachia, of course.

Now I do like the pale, snow-swept light of a cold winter's day, but one thing is certain; when the cold starts coming and the days get short, you've got to get a bit of a shell up - the psychological, spiritual equivalent of that extra layer of fat Eskimos have. Moods stop being so light and fluttery, more somber and steady. Sigur Ros makes a lot more sense. The humours thicken. As opposed to the Currier and Ives scenes seen from the bay window, winter is hard and corrosive when you go out in it - biting cold and wind and salt and grit - so you have to be a little harder too. It's just natural. Yet if you looked carefully last week, you could see everyone just letting their guard down a little, something like those plants that get fooled by really warm weeks in December and start to bud again at a very bad time, screwing the whole thing up.

And it was so easy to tell what was coming next, here.

Mother. Nature. Sucker. Punch.
(Hey, Mothernaturesuckerpunch would be great name for a band.)

It is now, as we say in the scientific community, cold as balls out there (layspeak: about 5 degrees below zero F tonight, more of the same all week). That's all well and good - it's winter, don't like it then go somewhere hellishly hot all the time - but the problem is, it's cold as slightly warmed balls in my apartment here, too. In order to understand this further, let me make a slight philosophical digression and ask:

Is knowledge gained through experience or through the intellect?

Here we have that great old argument between empiricism vs. rationalism, brought to bear on my apartment, which at points today seemed like the Varykino estate when Zhivago comes upon it, all icily snow-encrusted. Let the debate end here: I'm scoring the round for experience - I've been here since August, but before actually hitting this cold snap, I had no way of knowing there were so many little chilled spots like the ghostly virtual freezer floating just behind my easy chair, that the floor and glass surfaces would be so cold to the touch...that parts of this place stay toasty but overall, it's a bitch to keep heated. I had the thermostat up close to 80 today, then remembered that the bill will arrive before I can decamp. I've got two little electric heaters the landlords lent me when the furnace got replaced last fall - not that I'm going to leave them running while I sleep; I warmed one of those dusty old mofos up, and now my place smells a bit like ash. And ass.


(Webcam shot from my apartment)

Well, live and learn. And wear a sweater constantly. And socks to bed.

***

Want to know what some ridiculously brainy people believe in their heart of hearts, even if they can't quite prove it in the heart of their really, really sophisticated brains? Break open a couple smart pills, snort them off the cerebrum of the first Mensa member you find, and then check out the mind-bending answers given by some of the world's smartest scientists, philosophers and others at www.edge.org.

***

Speaking of intimidatingly brainy people, last Friday I got to hear Thomas Frank, editor of The Baffler and author of the book What's The Matter With Kansas?, among others. Not going to recap all he said, except that he primarily responded to the not-so-rhetorical question "How can a places like West Virginia and the rural, agricultural Midwest (part of the very-inaccurately-lumped-together Red States), overwhelmingly and increasingly impoverished by conservative policies (a three decade-old process), and traditionally moderate-Democratic, go to the GOP?

In a nutshell, Frank argues that it's because the Republicans, knowing they have nothing to stand on economically when speaking to the poor-and-getting-poorer, have profoundly succeeded in making "values" - their values - the wedge that divides the nation into good, solid Americans and bad, all-powerful, godless, wicked liberals. He reminds us that the notion of a classless American society is a comical one, but that the acceptance of it (remember how they laughed off "Two Americas") suits the right just as long as it keeps the working-class from noticing they're carrying the water for the economic elite (those nice, caring folks who come from where I come from). They hardly notice, as long as the real enemy is made out to be the invincible, conspiring cultural elite - Michael Moore! Al Franken! Leftist academics! ready to ban their Bibles, make them have abortions and marry lesbians.

There's a lot more to it, of course. He's an engaging speaker - check him out in person if you can, read his book by all means.

Nothing like being a month behind the cool Debris kids (Debristes?), but as of tonight I am officially on the Asobi Seksu bandwagon. Overblogged in '05!