One Track Mind

The pet owner is bundled up against the winter elements. His dog, because this is New York City, is teeny-tiny and dressed in an outfit that costs as much as the man's. The dog scampers along in front, keeping pace, pretending there is no leash connecting them. And then he stops to inspect the base of a retaining wall. The owner passes him and pauses, giving the lead a gentle tug. Come on. Time to go in, boy. The man shifts on his feet and shivers.

The animal stands there with his ass in the air, clearly shivering. He's one of those little guys that shivers on a warm day. A bitter wind whistles under his tail and across his exposed belly. His single-mindedness and determination is almost inspirational. I'm coming, I'm coming. I just really have to smell this because it's so ... interesting, and I ... Oh, wait, what's this? Oh, now that... that smells awful. Isn't that awful?

Snow

Today when I woke up, there was a fine dusting of snow on the ground and on the rooftops and in the trees. As if on cue, the night of December 1 was the first occasion of snow accumulation in New York City. I couldn't be more delighted.

I watched Fargo again last night for the first time in years. Ignoring for a moment the more gruesome elements of the story, and my absolute adoration of Frances McDormand's Marge Gunderson, it is primarily for me a strong reminder of Minnesota winters. Minnesota is not exactly the remote, desolate wasteland the Coen brothers would have you believe. There is a lot of open country along those highways. And, sure, you can take your life in your hands driving from Minneapolis to Leech Lake in the dead of a December night. But winter is a time of year that brings most Minnesotans to life. A state with so many lakes to freeze knows how to live it up when the temperatures get down.

All it takes to put me in a good mood is the random occurrence of rising moisture on the cold side of a low pressure system and the freezing of water vapor condensation into six-sided crystals heavy enough to fall to the surface of the earth. I'm not asking for much, really. Yet as simple and random and, frankly, common as it is, snowfall never fails to delight and inspire me.

I think what is less common and more remarkable is the stillness. For lightweight snowflakes to fall so gently in a more or less straight line, things have to be pretty calm. It's worth taking a few minutes to notice and appreciate — especially in the city. Five floors up, the world is impressively silent and peaceful. Some of the larger flakes are swirling around as they meet the building and flirting with the window panes on their way to the courtyard below. There is a cat, big, fat and lazy, on my lap, and I am drinking strong coffee, listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing about something that came upon a midnight clear. I am definitely a northern lad, grateful for snow. I pity the South.

Solstice

Today is the first day of summer, the longest day of the year, but you'd hardly know it. It doesn't feel much like summer. New York has been blessed with a mild spring this year. I desperately hope the lower temperatures continue.

It is the summer solstice. Basically, it all has to do with the position of the sun — which is way over my head. And everyone else's too. (Heh heh... get it?) Twice a year, the sun's path around the earth is the farthest north or south it can get from the Equator. On June 21, the North Pole is tilted toward the sun. Six months hence, on the winter solstice (to us Northern Hemisphere folk), the South Pole will be tilted toward the Sun. On the first day of summer, everywhere north of the Arctic Circle has 24 hours of sunlight, and the length of day at all places north of the Equator is more than 12 hours.

It amazes me to think how much of human belief has been shaped by the length of a day. It's all down to the accidental 23.45° tilt of Earth's axis, and its distance from the sun. One or two degrees in either direction, and the whole of human existence could have developed completely differently.

Who knows: If we were tilted a bit further, the polar ice caps would be bigger, we'd all be a little cooler year-round, sleep patterns would be different, biological rhythms would all be different.

We seem to make a bigger fuss over marking the winter solstice. Winter celebrations predate agriculture. As winter approached and the days grew shorter and the temperature dropped, and plants, animals and people began to die all around, I can see how ancient people might have been afraid that the sun was disappearing and not coming back. I'd do whatever I could do to get it to come back. Apparently, they lit bonfires and had big parties and built religions. (Today, rather than lighting bonfires, we risk housefires and death by electrifying evergreen shrubbery.) This in turn led to the founding of civilizations and nations and economic systems and flying to the moon and realizing that the whole thing is actually not managed by a guy in a glowing horse-drawn carriage.

My hat's off to those weirdos who counted the as-yet-undefined units of time between sunrise and sunset, and to all those who broke their backs hauling enormous stones and such just to tell time and mark dates. It's so easy for us now that they've done all the work.

Saving Quarters

The days are lengthening through these cool spring months, and afternoons are warming up slowly in anticipation of summer's full force. Families up and down Henry Street and East Broadway have begun to hang their laundry out their windows to dry. Wire hangers clatter against the fire escapes and iron grates along the tenement facades, and the damp clothes flap like prayer flags in the breeze that whips across Lower Manhattan and the East River.

"Paging spring. Please report to the customer service counter."

With each drearily passing day, I grow increasingly impatient with this bleak, grey, cold April. For a couple of weeks, it was odd — even funny. But now? Now it's just irritating. Add the rain up here in the Northeast, and I can hardly bear it. I felt almost human yesterday when the sun came out for about five minutes. Then it began to rain more. We had rugby training last night outdoors in a constant light, but cold, rain. Mud can be fun — and it was — but let's be reasonable with this temperature!

Frank Deford pointed out on NPR this morning that April is never a "seasonable" month. We always complain about April. But the problem this year is, rather than an unseasonable April, we're experiencing a 61-day March.

This might help to explain:


(Where can I get me a pair of those shoes? Mr. Snowmiser does not shop at Payless, I can tell you!)

Of course, when the spring does come (and go — quickly) I'll just be complaining about the heat and humidity.

Sick Time

As spring takes its sweet time getting here, I am reminded that, in this period of seasonal transition, i.e. April (the best April Fool's joke I've seen in a while is yesterday's temperature), one is well served to guard against germs and other nasties roaming the range. They seem to really sock it to you this time of year as the changing conditions play havoc with immune systems everywhere. I myself just got over my annual cold relatively unscathed. Now, right on schedule, it's time for some minor throat trauma.

It's around this time last year that I was fighting off an as yet undefinitively identified infection that was threatening to eat away the roof of my mouth. I can still feel the scars where the festering craters of decay had formed. I can still see the puzzled faces of the doctors with their pen lights aimed into my mouth (What is that?). I can still hear the otorhinolaryngologist wagging his finger, implying that my fondness for sex with men was probably at the root of my problem. (I still can't figure that one out.) I can feel the needle pushed deep into my ass cheek for the first of a series of three just-in-case injections. (Praise Jesus, I didn't need installments 2 or 3.)

The best part was the weight I lost avoiding, at first, solid food, and then all food, full stop.

Now we wait for the summer sun to come and burn off the fog of infection. Until then, people are getting pretty gross.

Yesterday while staring out my office window toward the street, I saw a woman sneeze on her kid. She was facing my building, pushing a little girl in an open stroller across the street. She reared back like a pitcher winding up for a fastball and let loose what looked to be an enormously satisfying sneeze. A thick mist issued from her face directly downward, raining droplets of biological refuse, visible from three stories up, onto her precious little charge.

She sniffed back some gack and carried on without pause.

Good luck, kid, I thought.

A day later, another woman on the subway let go of the chrome pole she was grasping so she could sneeze at her hand, only half covering her face, and then put it back exactly where it was on that pole. Another woman on the pole, wisely wearing gloves, registered her shock with a flurry of incredulous blinking and stepped aside to join a companion a few feet away.

It's Snowing in the Bathroom

I work on the top floor of a 19th century building tenement building converted into office space. Lots of quirks. Lots of character. One colleague's office has a sink. There are random non-functioning fireplaces scattered about the premises. That kind of thing. And I thought I had seen it all until this morning, when I walked into the bathroom (which includes a shower) nearest my office to blow my nose and felt little crystals of dropping down all around me. It was like Winona Ryder stumbling out into the backyard while Edward Scissorhands is carving an ice sculpture. (Well... all right. On a much smaller scale.) Apparently, when the wind picks up, ice particles are getting through a crack in the seal on the skylight.

Norway, José

KARE 11, a TV station in the Twin Cities, has issued an ad campaign in — what else? — Norwegian. At the end, he even says, "Ya, you betcha." They're promoting their new weatherman. And let me tell you, weather(man) or not — this kid is a little hunk of cute.

With a name like Sven Sundgaard, he sounds like he owns a coffee shop in Lake Wobegon. What choice is there? It begs for a little Scandinavian navel-gazing.