Wednesday, 8 of September of 2010
Thoughts and musings, illustrated
I thought you might enjoy this photo of a genuine sundog (parhelion) sighting on the island. It’s unusual because the clouds look more like some hybrid of stratus clouds than like the cirrus clouds that usually produce sundogs. But there must have been ice crystals in these clouds, whatever they were, for the sundogs to form.
More than two hundred trees toppled in Newton, according to yesterday’s Newton Tab, where the storm made the front page. (This will tell you something about the excitement level of events in my home town.)
When it began, we were exactly where any garden-loving New Englander would be on a Sunday in June: out working in the yard. But we had a particular excuse. We’d spent the earlier part of the weekend on Block Island and had a lot of catching up to do before Dan flew into his midweek work travel schedule.
I can’t say there was no warning about this storm. Of course there was. The weather was unsettled. This is *New England* we’re talking about here, right? So we ignored the darkening sky, the rising wind. We did note the near-constant background growling of thunder, a more common phenomenon in the midwest than here. We also noted the occasional loud crash and tried our best to hurry putting cages onto the tomato plants in the side yard.
But when the rain came, it came all at once, the air turning suddenly into an environment more suitable for fish than for people. We dropped the tomato cages and fled. Into the screen porch, the nearest door. Soaked. Oblivious of boundaries, wind blew rain right through the screens. We shed muddy gardening shoes and escaped indoors.
Half an hour later, the storm was gone. So was our power.
This turns out to be a big event in our neighborhood, right up there with the annual clean-up party at the community garden. “Is your power out, too?” a neighbor emails our neighborhood mailing list. I receive it on my Blackberry. Yes, we’re all without power. A neighbor reports a tree down on the road leading into the neighborhood. Struck by lightning. Dan and I venture outside to investigate.Many of our neighbors do the same.
This is what it looks like:
Strangely, no one seems upset. The atmosphere is almost festive. As dusk falls, no street lights glare into the peaceful evening. Soft candlelight in the windows reveals who is at home. We grill fish and broccolini and warm up leftover mashed potatoes on the grill. A feast.
We decide to walk into Newton Centre to get ice cream for dessert. We meet a neighbor at the community garden, who tells us that the electric company has come by. Temporarily, they’ve fixed the problem. We look around at the darkened street and raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Well, not fixed, exactly,” he says. “But they put up that yellow crime-scene tape on both ends of the road where the tree is down.” As if otherwise people would drive right through and not notice.
“Did they say when they were going to fix it?”
“Not right away,” says our neighbor. “They have to work on all the fires first. There are six or eight of those. They don’t know how long it will take. And there are eight trees down just in this immediate area.”
On the way home from Newton Centre, we see one of those other downed trees. The electric company has started work, and a police car, lights flashing, blocks the road while the work is going on. And guess what’s on the screen of the inboard laptop computer in the police car! Solitaire! I swear this is true. Er… that is, Officer, someone must have hacked my blog and put that in. I never saw anything like that. Not me.
“If no one has any electricity,” a neighbor who is away from town emails, “how is everyone managing to send around all these emails?” Just the way you sent yours, of course, I want to reply, but someone else gets to it first. On our cell phones. Computer? What computer?
Still enjoying the festive spirit of an evening with no electricity (and trying not to worry too much about what will happen to the contents of the refrigerator if this turns into a week with no electricity), we go home and to bed.
The lights come blindingly on all over the house at exactly 4:13am.
Thank you, NStar, for working through the night while we slept.
Our last trip out to the island already seems so long ago! It’s hard to believe it was less than a month, and harder still to believe that the fall season is almost over. On that last trip, we spent a good part of Friday on the standby line at Point Judith–from an hour before the first ferry of the morning until the 3:30pm ferry, when we finally got the car onto the boat. “We have to get a house someplace closer,” Dan pretended to complain that evening. “We left the house at 6am, and we didn’t get here until 5pm.” But on a day that promised only clouds and rain, the sky gave us a treat at Pt. Judith as the storm system rolled in–and another one on the island when the sun lined up with a gap in the clouds for an unexpected display.
Cloud front moving in at Pt. Judith
A hole in the clouds just at sunset
It’s our first day on a two-week cruise. I wake in the middle of the night and stumble by flashlight past the narrow space between the foot of the bed and the wall of the cabin, negotiating with difficulty the tight corner where the edge of the TV stand juts into the room leaving only inches for the sleepy nighttime passage to the (let’s use the nautical term here) head. My cell phone, left plugged in on the desk, displays the time: 5am. On the way back to bed, my groggy mind forms a dangerous thought:
I wonder what it’s like outside at five in the morning.
My side of the bed is less than one foot from the balcony door, and so it is not a long leap from thinking to doing. I open the door and go outside. The air is humid, warm, and very fresh—way better than the air-conditioned sterility inside.
The sky is black. Light spilling from the ship illuminates the water swirling rapidly by. There are distant lights on the horizon: I wonder what island. Stars shine overhead. Stars! I bet if I could get out into a place with nothing overhead there’d be a gazillion stars. Deck 12, for example, with its running track.
This is ridiculous, I think. It’s five in the middle-of-the-night morning, for heaven’s sake! I go back to bed.
Ten minutes later, I’m up, dressed, and out of the cabin. I learn that the island sliding by to starboard is Cuba.
Deck 12 has a fine running track, and it is completely deserted. It’s also distressingly well lit. There are no visible stars. The warm, windy air is wonderful. Birds are everywhere. They seem somehow trapped in the ship’s gravity. They fly in front of me as I run, but they won’t—or can’t—fly aside.
The track is too short; it circles around only about halfway to the stern of the ship. Once or twice around, and I run down the seven flights of stairs to the track on deck 5, which I’ve heard is longer and I hope will be a little darker. The freedom of movement on the deserted ship feels great. As I run forward on the starboard side of the ship it gets a little too dark. Good thing I brought a flashlight (yes, I really did) because now I need it. There are no lights. The deck peters out into a staircase, which has been closed off with plastic netting, but the netting has been taken down on one side. Closed or open? Hard to tell. Open, I decide, and up I go.
The bow of Deck 6 is unlit, and it’s really something. Cuba is more rural now, with only a twinkling of occasional lights. Above, the black sky flaunts its promised gazillion stars. On the port side of the ship, distant lightning illuminates clouds in soundless fireworks. The port stairway from Deck 6 to Deck 5 is definitely closed, but the temporary netting is easy to step over. I’ve gotten good at this. I run the Deck 5-Deck 6 circuit several times, then head back up to Deck 12. Definitely not as good. Back to Deck 5.
And then back to Deck 12, where I head to the gym for a workout on the deserted machines. By the time I leave at 6:30 people have started to arrive.
I’ve been up for an hour and a half, and now it’s time to start my day. I feel great.
Happy birthday, Dan! And many happy returns of the day!
As I sit at the kitchen table going over the program for Worldcon 67 (Anticipation 2009), the sky darkens. And then really darkens. Rain pours so heavily it drowns out the sound of the waterfall. Flowers are subjugated into down-facing humiliation, and I marvel that they have evolved to stand such a beating.
Thunder roars.
Amber, who has been napping at the edge of the rug, looks up in alarm. As the thunder strikes again, he scrambles, terrified, to his feet.
Amber, the world's silliest, most doglike cat
I try to soothe him. “It’s okay, Kitty. It’s all right.”
But Amber is not to be soothed. He knows that whatever this is, is horrible. He slinks from the room, keeping as low to the floor as he can. Later, I find him hiding on a chair pushed far under the dining room table. He won’t let me touch him.
I almost just about can’t stand looking at the weather forecast any more.
Today Showers Likely Hi 73 °F |
Tonight Chance Showers Lo 61 °F |
Tuesday Chance Tstms Hi 70 °F |
Tuesday Night  Chance Tstms Lo 61 °F |
Wednesday Tstms Likely Hi 75 °F |
Wednesday Night Chance Tstms Lo 62 °F |
Thursday Chance Showers Hi 76 °F |
Thursday Night  Chance Showers Lo 62 °F |
Friday Chance Showers Hi 79 °F |
Honestly, it’s been so grey and wet here in New England the last two months that moss is starting to grow on the windowsills and doormats. The formerly white garage door is turning green.
It’s so rainy that a family down the street is building an ark in their back yard.
The average high temperature in June in Boston is 77ºF.
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There’s hardly anything I can add to this, except that I hope the folks up in Boston enjoy their heat wave…
Tonight Patchy Fog Lo 50 °F |
Thursday Patchy Fog Hi 65 °F |
Thursday Night Patchy Fog Lo 50 °F |
Friday Patchy Fog Hi 62 °F |
Friday Night Patchy Fog Lo 50 °F |
Saturday Patchy Fog Hi 65 °F |
Saturday Night Patchy Fog Lo 51 °F |
A thunderstorm is passing overhead. A flash of lightning, mostly obscured by the trees is closely followed by a loud crack and a persistent roll of thunder. Amber, who the moment before had been sleeping by my side, is instantly alert. His head jerks up. His eyes are wide; his pupils, dark. His ears antenna in all directions. The sound passes. Amber rests his head on his paws again.
I suddenly understand that wherever we get this fear of lightning and thunder from, it’s very deep and very ancient.
