Friday, March 21, 2014

The Foothills of Disordered Thinking


Warmer temperatures and, more importantly, rain have worked together to reduce the Mountains of Madness to a pittance of their former glory. Their retreat has left behind things that were trapped in the snow, trash and silt and -- a pvc pipe? I do not know where it came from, but the upper end looks torn, as if ripped off by a careless snowplow. It's also speckled with the grime of the snowheap, so I imagine, yes, it was transported here with the snow.

Will we still have something on April 1st? That does depend on how much rain we get over the next week -- but it's very, very likely. That's still a significant amount of frozen H2O.


Thursday, March 20, 2014

Give a Child a Book

Over the weekend I learned about a local charity with a specific aim: to give books to children. Many children grow up without having a single book of their own.

I grew up in a house that was filled with books, and I was free to read any that I could. I read a lot of classic SF from the family collection, and a lot of non-fiction. I did not, however, have a collection of children's books. There were a few, yes, but most of the easy reader books that I read came from school and went back to school.

And yet, I did have a book of my own, given to me by a college student. I couldn't have been more than five or six at the time. They gave me the book, and I like it very much. It had interesting pictures. As I grew older and could understand the words, I found it very interesting to read.

I did not know at the time that they had picked up the book especially for me. I thought, like so many things in my life, that it was another hand-me-down, and may not have seemed as excited by this gift as I really was. Or perhaps because I opened it and fell into it, they knew I did indeed like it.

So I would like to say thank you for this book, which turned out to have a life-long impression on me. And I would like to encourage other people to give books to children, books with interesting pictures and fun facts, such as the life cycle of a parasitic worm. Thank you very much.

And see? I still have that book!


Monday, March 10, 2014

The Shrinking Mountains of Madness



February 21st, 2014


February 28th, 2014

March 10th, 2014

As you can see, the endless winter has ended, and the Mountains of Madness are shrinking.  How much longer before Regional Warming destroys then forever?