Took a break to take a walk through a lovely, gentle snowfall this afternoon. Here’s Boston (actually, Brookline) doing its winter wonderland thang:
First up: we grow our herons tough up here:
Next–local cats are pretty hardy too.
I had a long, long week of writing something very hard to bring off–just finished yesterday, and it’s damn good if I do say so as shouldn’t. So today I’m going to look at birds and four-foots and not apologize for playing hooky.
That’s the story from the Hub of the Universe. How y’all doing wherever you are?
Which is to say–have some thread with which to spin a yarn.
ETA: That was some professional grade bigfooting! Imma just leave this up here for people to enjoy–I think we can all handle reading two posts, one after another. And this ain’t much of a post.
ETA 2: And unbigfooting almost as fast! Hah! We are a full service blog, fully as organized as the Democratic Party.
ETA 3: Just uploaded a slightly edited version of the kitty photo–tried to get a little truer to the colors as seen IRW.
Betty Cracker
I wonder if the heron switches feet so one is always warm? I guess I would if I had to stand in the snow without shoes! Boston is pretty in the snow.
trollhattan
Sledcat evidently making up its mind about the whole bundle up and go outside thing.
On the topic, we, too, have snow. This is a Good Thing (and handily, well away from the house).
zhena gogolia
Cute kitty. I hate winter.
SuzieC
Cutest cat photo I have seen today.
Ken
Herons, ducks, geese — they’re all amazing. Wade or paddle around in the near-freezing water, ducking your head under to get lunch, then when it gets too cold, hop out and stand on an ice floe for a while.
I still find the squirrels the most impressive, though. I wouldn’t want to try to make it through winter inside a ball of leaves forty feet up in a tree, exposed to the full force of winter winds.
Suzanne
Here in Brookline, PA, we only got about an inch of snow. It’s already starting to melt.
sab
Wrong thread?
Tom Levenson
@sab: The nice young couple taking him for a drag said he liked being outside. He seemed very placid. Can’t say more than that.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Not a flake of snow yet this winter. I’m grumpy.
CaseyL
That kitty is, obviously, neither Tikka nor Champ, both of whom would have in no uncertain terms prevented this put-the-kitty-in-a-sled shenanigans before the first muffler came out!
Very happy to hear your writing is going well, because I enjoy the hell out of your books. (Yes, I do realize its actual publication is… a long way off.)
@Betty Cracker: I am always wondering how outdoor critters keep their feet warm in the winter.
In birds, my understanding is there’s some fiendishly complicated blood flow loop thing, where warm blood from the body’s interior is constantly sent to the feet and cold blood from the feet is whisked back to the interior to be warmed up again.
But other animals who seem to happily pad about in the snow? I have no clue how they manage it.
Tom Levenson
@sab: Did you just ask if the kitteh was enjoying himself? If not, my reply to you makes no sense whatever.
Danielx
Expecting five to nine inches on Wednesday, or so I’m told. On the other hand they were talking 12-24 couple of weeks back and got maybe an inch.
Tom Levenson
@CaseyL: Thanks re the good wishes on the writing. I’m just returning to the book, actually. The project last week was a preface that I’d been invited to do to the first Chinese edition of my dad’s work. That would be Joseph R. Levenson–who is someone well known in China studies circles and no where else. For a lot of reasons that was a very tough assignment. Rewarding, but hard, both intellectually and emotionally.
Now I’m back to cholera, which is much more pleasant, if you take my meaning.
Tom Levenson
@Danielx: If you’re talking about Boston/MA–last I looked here in greater Boston itself we’re hovering right on the snow-rain line. It could be a very sloppy Wednesday…
zhena gogolia
@Tom Levenson: I figured it out.
Chris T.
@CaseyL:
The rete mirabile, it’s found in numerous critters, in various places. Humans have one in the nose, for instance.
C Stars
We were in Marin County yesterday and I saw a svelte woman in a fur-lined puffy vest walking her svelte dog in a fur-lined puffy vest. I love pets in clothes.
zhena gogolia
RIP Sal Bando. I’m not a big baseball expert, but I remember his name coming out of my mother’s transistor radio as she listened to the game.
CaseyL
@Chris T.: I hope it works better for birdie feet than it does for my nose, which does NOT stay warm in the cold.
(Though, I will grant you, the insides don’t actually freeze, which is possibly all the rete mirabile is intended for.)
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Diamond & Silk was the minstrel show Dump would use as an opening act for his campaign rallies. He even had them in White House for various photo opts. Diamond passed away a couple weeks ago at age 51. Many, many people say it was due to Covid as she was a virulent vaccine denier, who peddled demented conspiracy theories.
Dump openly and repeatedly complained to the audience that the service was too long. He said it should only be 15 to 20 minutes, not three plus hours.
Still, Dump pulling his “I don’t know her, I’ve never met her, I wouldn’t know what she looked like if she was standing next to me” at a funeral got me to laugh out loud. At least he didn’t plead the Fifth.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
zhena gogolia
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: JLCauvin gave a great eulogy (in TFG persona). It’s on YouTube. (Can’t search now, can’t make any noise.)
TheronWare
Kitty!🐱
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
I gather “Silk” has now taken to twitter to hint that her anti-vax sister got the vax and it killed her
Betty Cracker
It’s 61 degrees here, and my dogs whimper and look pitiful if we stay outside more than two minutes. Hard to believe their ancestors were based in Boston!
Elizabelle
I love Sled Cat. And thank you for the snow pictures.
I love snow, and always hope that we get some each winter. Even though we are not set up well for it in central Virginia.
Look forward to the new book. How does cholera fit in??
TaMara
@Betty Cracker: ooo! ooo! I have ducks, so I know the answer to this.
Ducks and other birds have a circulation system that keeps their feet warmed (up to a point, I have to watch the ducks when temps dip below 24 degrees F).
The rest of them is full of downy feathers they can puff up, so that’s not an issue. Pick up a duck and you can feel the warmth under their top feathers.
And water birds will often sit in the water, because its temp is warmer than, say, the 20-degree air temp.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@zhena gogolia:
Are you a reference librarian or running silent on a submarine?
zhena gogolia
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: In same room with husband, who’s practicing a lecture.
Betty Cracker
@TaMara: clever birds! Can confirm the last point — we had a hard freeze over the holidays, and I saw lots of waterbirds in the river!
Ajabu
As long as we have an open thread:
I finally posted the reference to my dear friend, Joyce Carol Thomas – writer of children’s books for Black children, on the long dead medium cool from last night. Please check her out. She was an extraordinary woman. Also, because it’s an open thread: Valentine’s Day is near and I have a wonderful cd of Love songs available. Get my email from WaterGirl if you’re interested!
currawong
I call your heron and raise you an elephant seal. (thats’ where I park to take my dog for a walk along the shore)
Link
NutmegAgain
Oh, how I miss living in MA. oh well, them’s the breaks I guess. How on earth did those folks get their cat to sit still in the sled… and why did they think it would enjoy the ride?
Tom Levenson
@Elizabelle: Cholera is such a great subject!
In my book, it’s a key player in the attempt to figure out what causes infectious diseases. I’m writing about germ theory–its long prehistory; how it was worked out; and then what we did with that extremely useful knowledge (squandered some/a lot of the advantages we gained from the advance). I’m just starting the last chapter in which it plays a major role, looking at incidents in the 5th (sic!) global pandemic wave of the 19th century.
West of the Rockies
Dating myself here, but seeing Boston in the snow, I started hearing the theme to Love Story in my head.
Of all the silly lines ever, “Love is never having to say you’re sorry,” is near the top. Now, being a narcissist is maybe never having to say you’re sorry.
Tom Levenson
@currawong: Awesome animals!
I got to see the breeding population at Año Nuevo State Park (between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz in California) last Jan.
They be big beasts.
WaterGirl
That top picture is gorgeous, and I love the kitty on the sled. If that kitty were unhappy, I think we would know.
CaseyL
@Tom Levenson:
I know the story about a community well somewhere in 19th (?) Century London that gave everyone who used it cholera, which led to the first municipally-maintained water supply. But that’s the only factoid I know connecting pandemics, germs, and public health. I’m sure there’s much more to it.
Anyway
@West of the Rockies:
My candidate for that is “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”
Betty Cracker
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: I think he’s losing what few marbles were still rolling around in his noggin. He mistook a photo of Jean Carrol for Marla Maples in court the other day.
frosty
You didn’t use the Talk About Whatever You Want tag?
Leto
Respite open thread? Here is artwork from Jean Béraud (January 12, 1849 – Oct. 04, 1935). For no other reason than it’s vibrant and amazing.
HumboldtBlue
@Chris T.:
This why we read this blog. That, and the boobies.
@zhena gogolia:
Those A’s teams are the first teams I remember from my childhood. Sal Bando, Blue Moon Odom, Vida Blue, Gene Tenace, Catfish, Ray Fosse, Reggie, Campanaris…
randy khan)
@WaterGirl: I agree. In fact, if that kitty were unhappy, it wouldn’t be in the sled.
Tom Levenson
@CaseyL: John Snow’s Broad Street Pump!
That’s a great story, and it’s definitely in the book.
I just came across a weird anecdote: the 1910 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in its article on Egypt asserts that the Brits gained the loyalty of the newly reorganized Egyptian army’s enlisted by the care provided by British officers and nurses for men struck by cholera in the 1883 outbreak there–when the Egyptian officers and the wealthy of Cairo had headed for the hills (as the article alleges–haven’t checked that).
Imperialism, natural history, pandemics, science (the Egyptian outbreak was Robert Koch’s first stop in the expedition on which he rediscovered the cholera microbe and confirmed what folks like Snow had argued without knowing what the cholera “poison” in the water might be).
I could go on, and will–in the MS.
Tom Levenson
@Leto: Wonderful.
Will grab some to illustrate stuff here.
randy khan)
Nice to see some civilized snow photos, instead of disastrous snow photos.
We had a few flakes in the air over the MLK weekend, but barely enough to notice and certainly nothing that hung around. February is actually the peak snow month in the D.C. area, but I’m not getting a real snowy feeling for this winter at all.
Suzanne
That’s my maiden name. I’ve always wondered if he was a relative.
zhena gogolia
@HumboldtBlue: Jim Gentile!
J R in WV
@Leto:
Amazing artistic thread, thanks so much !!
zhena gogolia
Wow, Katie Porter’s annoying e-mails and texts have been replaced by Ruben Gallegos’s.
Amir Khalid
@West of the Rockies:
I think the writer was trying for something more like “Love means having no regrets afterwards”, but I’m not sure that it’s good advice for lovers either way.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: I think that is how they work it because that other foot can get up into the insulation under the tummy. I’ll have to look next time there’s snow on my ground, too.
Excellent work doing something very hard, Tom. You’re supposed to take a break afterward. Revel in it.
WereBear
@C Stars: My mother’s Papillon would not go out without wearing one of his complete outfits. He loved the attention he got from wearing clothes.
WereBear
@Tom Levenson: I’m studying how the Roaring 20s reacted to germ theory, such as men shaving their facial hair for hygienic reasons.
WereBear
@WaterGirl: I always figured if the cat wore the thing long enough to take a picture, they really didn’t mind.
Baud
@WereBear:
Did men refuse to shave their beards until they did the research?
dm
@zhena gogolia: I’ve taken to using the “unsubscribe” links at the bottom of those mails, and it’s gone a long way toward reducing the noise in my inbox.
Regarding Love Story: the other day I walked past a Cambridge laundromat with a note in the window: “This laundromat was in the movie Love Story.”
Tom Levenson
@WereBear: Interesting! Cool.
That’s a fascinating interstitial time. After germ theory, after the first wave of vaccines begins to have an impact–but before antibiotics and before the full implications of the virus v. microbe distinction become clear.
And with the flu pandemic being so rapidly flushed down the memory hole…
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: That just goes to show that Jean Carrol was most definitely his type.
WaterGirl
@frosty: I enjoy the open mockery. :-)
WaterGirl
@randy khan): Yep!
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: If you like what you know about him, just assume that he is a relative. If not, then go the other way.
WereBear
@Baud: It was a gradual understanding of how it worked that culminated in the Great Gatsby look. Men’s moustaches shrank to small and trimmed.
WereBear
@Baud: I’m sure men were also slaves to fashion.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Just unsubscribe until you are interested in donating.
dm
Oh. Open thread. The Earth’s core is slowing down:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/01/23/earth-core-slowing/
It appears to do this on a 70-year cycle (slower than Earth’s rotation, then faster than Earth’s rotation). I wonder (1) what the mainspring is, (2) how its period has changed over the eons (600 million years ago the Earth’s day was 22 hours long — the Moon exerts a drag through tidal forces that currently slows the Earth’s rotation 1.8 milliseconds per century).
dexwood
@zhena gogolia: Jim Gentile! I was about 9 when he began playing for the Orioles and saw him play many times. The autographed ball he gave me disappeared long ago.
dm
@WaterGirl: Just unsubscribe, then use Act Blue when you want to start contributing again (then …. unsubscribe again).
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: In my experience, unsubscribe just leads to more e-mails.
persistentillusion
@zhena gogolia: Here it is, if you can bear his voice. https://www.tiktok.com/@jlcauvin/video/7186999795200953643
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: That’s not my experience at all.
zhena gogolia
@persistentillusion: Thanks — I’ve watched it repeatedly. It’s really funny. (in a macabre way)
WaterGirl
@dm: Unless you give to ActBlue through our thermometers! I have them set to ask when you donate if you want the campaign to have your information.
frosty
@WaterGirl: You’re posting for the right blog then!
Matt McIrvin
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Trump’s ability to be horrible even to the other garbage humans in his orbit always amazes me. I don’t know why it amazes me.
Ohio Mom
We changed internet providers a while back and I had to give up my @fuse.net address.
On one hand, it was a pain alerting crucial correspondents to note my new gmail address but on the other hand, the elimination of fundraising emails!
Ohio Dad always had a gmail account so I’ve been hearing from him about Katie Porter’s pleas. Now I know to expect him to start complaining about Ruben Gallegos’s.
Anyway
@zhena gogolia:
I was spared Katie Potter’s annoying emails but have received numerous texts and emails from Gallego. I I unsubscribed but expect another blast now that he’s officially announced he’s running.
Shana
@dm: When I took my daughter to the University of Chicago for her first year, in the fall on 2008 we saw a sign in a dry cleaner’s window touting that Obama used their services. I wonder if it’s still there. The local Walgreens had great Obama swag too.
dm
@WaterGirl: I do, but you don’t thermometer all the candidates I want to give to (like Dem. Assn. of Secretaries of State, AGs, Dem Legislative Campaign Committee — i.e., farm team and infrastructure). (On the other hand, I don’t get that much junk mail from those groups, I don’t think.)
“Unsubscribe” seems to work for me, too.
dm
@Shana: That’s certainly snazzier than a fifty-year-old forgettable movie.
BruceFromOhio
@Leto: Not a fan of the style, but those are amazeballs.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I just unsubscribed from Ruben G.
I got a followup message by email:
BruceFromOhio
Lets go, Brandon. https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/23/us/brandon-tsay-alhambra-monterey-park-shooting/index.html
tybee
@Leto:
thanks. very nice.
mrmoshpotato
Chicago has 3.2″ of snow forecast for Wednesday. Meh. And?
mrmoshpotato
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: I would feel bad for the dead if she wasn’t such a charlatan in life.
Geminid
@BruceFromOhio: I was interested to see there is a new Sheriff in LA County. I remember that Mr. Luna was challenging the incumbent, but I lost track of that race amidst all the other midterm news.
Hopefully this will be a change for the better.
Skepticat
Maine’s Lake Region has about 12 to 14 new inches of snow, and a friend in Pownal stopped measuring once he hit 18 inches. It was pretty light and fluffy, but I ought not type that out loud for fear I’ll tempt the fates, as Wednesday’s storm is supposed to clobber us with about a foot of heavy, wet snow. Bye-bye power; I had no idea how fragile the power grid is in this area. It’s past time to return to The Bahamas.
mayim
@CaseyL:
I know this threis now long dead, but a couple things about the London cholera epidemic of 1854:
The book The Ghost Map is a good introduction to the topic.
After the epidemic, the new Victorian health department surveyed the area it happened and published a report about it ~ they asked details down to what rooms in a house people died in. I found it when working with a patron whose family lived in the area ~ nice genealogical tidbits. The report is digitized and available at archive.org.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
@mrmoshpotato: Mike Bilandic’s ghost laughs at 3 inches of snow
WaterGirl
@David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch: Ha!