Consolation prize

It seems like it was just a few weeks ago that we packed up the down comforter with the flannel sheets. But out it came again last night as we closed the windows to keep out the near frosty night air. And it's frost for real tonight for some of you who live up in the nose-bleed seats of the Adirondacks. So cover up the tomatoes, if late blight has left you any.

Last I checked, it was still August. The summer has been a shambles--chilly, wet, ungenerous with sunshine. And as always, way too short. I'd file a grievance if I could identify the guilty party. If insanity is trying the same thing over and over, but expecting different results, what does that say of our expectations of the weather? This is cruel country for an optimist. But it's also too dismal too often to always have a grump on about it. We are left to the consolation of palliative measures--chocolate for instance. Hot chocolate. Hmmmm.

Next rest stop

What a difference a week makes. From sun on leaves to snow-flattened lilacs and bent and broken trees. And before another week is out we will have gone through both Halloween and the end of an endless election. Even the time will change (for those who are looking for change) one hour back. The snow will probably go, and maybe come back, too. And the markets might go way down one day, and way up the next. Frankly, I could use a little Dramamine.

When I used to get carsick as a kid, my Mom told me not to look out the side window or down at the road speeding by, but to focus instead on the horizon, to rest my eyes on the long view. Good advice for the nervous tummy. And good advice for the nervous voter, the nervous investor, and the just plain nervous. Just keep it together for the next few miles. Surely there'll be a rest stop soon.

Perfect lack of storm

October has been so sweet. All that sun, all that glorious color. Everything has to come together just right to create such a season. Frost, but not too much, rain enough for healthy color, but not so much as to strip the trees. Snow and wind have to bide their time, too. A perfect lack of storm, one might say. You want to just walk along and kick the leaves a little, head full of nothing.

Such a contrast with the wider world—the bellicose campaign and the deep unease of financial freefall. But then fall has always been the season of cognitive dissonance. You want to revel in it, suck the last beauty from the season's marrow, but know in your own bones how soon the snow will fly. The geese fly, too. Time to bunker up and hunker down, time for the den and the long uneasy watch 'til spring. Snowbird time; get-out-of-Dodge time. Still, the leaves are lambent in the slant afternoon light. Give them their moment while it lasts.

Weather report: improving

I've been having a hard time with the weather. Not the weather outside--that's pretty sweet--but the weather online. Providing accurate and comprehensive weather data for an area this huge is a struggle both on air, and on the website. For years we have largely abandoned the field to the weather networks online, providing at ncpr.org only sketchy plug-ins with minimal forecast data, no alerts, no regional radar. As many of you have been at pains to point out over the years--pretty lame.

Having become enamored of Google Gadgets, last week I tried to put together something better. I tuned up a forecast scroller for each of the regions pages that gave current conditions and twenty-four hours of forecast for a specific location or set of locations. Except that its notion of current conditions runs hours out of date. I found a beautiful zoomable regional map with animated precipitation radar, except that it wouldn't work for the 8% of our visitors using the Safari browser--showing the western US to newer versions, and crashing the older browsers altogether. No way to win geekly glory.

So we bit the bullet and installed the shareware package HamWeather, which gives about as much information as anyone can absorb. It's still in shakedown phase--current conditions are still too out of date, there are styling conflicts that make the display a little buggy, etc. But I'm psyched, and even better, have some control over how it works. Once all is in order, you will be able to set the page to your own preferred location for return visits. Oxbow is, after all, the rightful center of the universe. And at 2 pm, it's mostly sunny there and 78 degrees, relative humidity 34%, 0% chance of rain, winds SSW at 7 mph. Check out the new page; the weather is improving.

Tough sledding

Radio Bob is on arctic safari today, hauling radio gear by snow machine up through the ice fields on Blue Mountain. If his mission to replace our damaged antenna is a success, we will be able to stop apologizing to everyone in the central and southern Adirondacks, who have had the insult of no radio added to the injury of a late spring storm. The Blue Mountain facility is a central distribution point for us, feeding our signal on to other transmitters in North Creek, Lake George, Glens Falls, Newcomb and Speculator. We hope to have good news soon. Thanks to everyone for their patience.

This has been a tough week for public broadcasting infrastructure in the North Country. Mountain Lake PBS suffered the collapse of its 400-foot broadcast tower during bad weather on Lyon Mountain. On the other hand, it looks like cell-phone service will soon be extended onto the currently uncovered stretches of the Northway, with the just-announced agreement between the Spitzer administration and Verizon.

It pays to be humble before the power of the weather, though as it turns out, the weather will humble us whether we agree or not. But this just in—the good news I hinted at above--Radio Bob reports the fix is done, and all the transmitters are on. Weather permitting, of course.

No picnic

Even with a late start, such as this winter got, by February the cold gets old. The brutality of northern February drives up depression rates, drinking, random acts of violence, self-slaughter. Clearly, a preternatural blowout holiday is called for. But the selection available to us is frankly depressing. Groundhog Day? Unpromising. We wish there were only six weeks left. There’s Lincoln’s birthday and Washington’s birthday, both now rolled together into something called Presidents Day, but where’s the party in that? Everyone has at least one president they wouldn’t celebrate at gunpoint; some have many. Discussing one’s views on the topic, particularly over strong drink, is not recommended. And then there’s Valentine’s Day, which is basically a bummer for anyone not deranged by the throes of new-found passion.

China and Tibet have the good sense to postpone their New Year into February. Dragons and fireworks—now there is something to work with. And Ottawa, on seeing nothing taller than a fencepost between them and the North Pole, wisely invented Winterlude. If you’re going to be hanging around outside chipping ice, you might as well eat some deep-fried dough. But if we’re going to borrow a celebration from foreign parts, I vote to borrow from the Buddhists. On their calendar, today is Nirvana Day. The possibilities are breathtaking.

Loss of tone

It is common custom in the North Country, when meeting folks from other northern climes, to have a--shall we say--writing-your-name-in-the-snow contest about who has it the worst. But this run of warm Decembers is eroding our credibility. What happened to those regular autumn blizzards that contributed so much to our imagined moral fiber? Why are the geese still hanging around? Winter is supposed to be endless and unendurable, brutal to the point of weeping. That's why we feel so deserving of our practice sessions in heaven, packing up head colds and rheumatism to flaunt cadaverous winter paunches on the beaches of the southlands. If winter is merely miserable, then this snowbirding is merely self-indulgent. If we could just have a few weeks where the temperature never rises above zero, and you need a purple tennis ball on the aerial to find your car, that would be all it would take to get us back into smug shape. "Ha--you call that winter? Let me tell you about winter..."

In the forecast

It may be 60 here today, but it's 17 in Minnesota, heading east, and you know what that means. It means you can finally relax. All those fall chores that have been piling up and hanging over your head—you've put them off just long enough. Now you don't have to sweat about the unraked leaves, the unpicked rock scattered around the bare new leach field, the last few months of blow-down. Touching up the house trim, edging the walk, digging under the squalor left in the flower beds—Fahgedabowdit! Snow hides all sins. Focus instead on the hot chocolate and the knit cozy on the sofa. Trade in the rabbit food for pasta and potatoes. Hunker down. Your spring may be insanely busy, but it probably would have been anyway. And besides—it's months from now. Wonder what's new on the Sci-Fi Channel?