Arctic Oscillation Is All That It's Cracked Up to Be

April 21, 2013

            How can it possibly be April 21? Something new is something getting to be very old. We are shattering records with what the noaa.gov is calling Arctic Oscillation. Here are some fine images and explanation of its patterns.

http://nsidc.org/icelights/2012/02/02/the-arctic-oscillation-winter-storms-and-sea-ice/


In other words the cold air is just circling around and around and around. Snow, and plenty of it. I think I got 14 inches of what felt like cement. The pine tree in the front was laden with it and of course it lost branches. Only two this year but of course winter is not over yet. I think about taking the great white pine down but the cost holds me back. I looked at it from my neighbor’s house and it is fine above house level. I think of the birds that live near the top undisturbed, unbeknownst to us.

I took a walk yesterday with a neighbor. Forty degrees felt downright HOT!! What’s going to happen when it hits seventy degrees in about two weeks? Yes it will come and quickly. The buds on the trees are thick and waiting for the first warm day. The sun warms them just enough to encourage the tree to continue on its cycle of spring. I heard Mourning Doves the other day. All the birds hover near the south sides of buildings and homes to stay warm when the weather is so bad. They survive.

            So what’s new in this very, very old winter season? The closest I can come to something new is a new Apple TV. It’s a devise that connects the internet to the TV.  It’s not a big new thing but it does give me opportunity to watch my favorite British mysteries. I’m sure I’ll find other uses for it.

            SPRING I’m calling out to you!!!! I can only, just barely, touch your fingertips. Embrace me.

            Sincerely,

            Jeanne Mulcare

More Snow and More Snow.

April 14, 2013

Oh what the hell! Why are we getting snow? It’s not funny or even rational anymore. It’s just pathetic, just mean and pathetic. Sigh. I think of the book "On the Edge of Nowhere" by James Huntington a lot these days. They had it much harder in Alaska in the early 20th Century than we do in our warm houses and warm cars. He and his brother Sidney who wrote "Shadows on the Koyukuk" described their sometimes harrowing moments and sorrows and the day to day moments which to their very accomplished lives. 

Anyway, something new on this mean and pathetic day. I’ve decided to learn Backgammon. I bought an app and the app is helping me to learn the plays and strategy. The game is 5000 years old. You move by the role of the dice or die to be more accurate. The object is to get your pieces, white or black, one side to the other and down to the other end and back. So you move in a horseshoe pattern. There is strategy involved and that’s what makes it challenging.

I like it because it makes me think and it calms me. And it's old. It connects me with a past that is as old as the beginning of modern civilization in Egypt and Iraq and Persia.  

I think this ancient game is a perfect something new for a lousy, pitiful, pathetic April 14^th. Here's to hot chocolate and backgammon and maybe a couple of very good books. 

Sincerely,

Jeanne Mulcare

So This Is What All the Fuss Is About.

April 6, 2013

            What’s in a wine? I don’t have the slightest idea…well beside the grapes of course.  It would take a connoisseur to tell me what I’m missing.  Since a connoisseur wasn’t handy I asked my sister who has, over the years, developed a love for a good ‘Cab’.  I wanted to try a red wine because I’ve never particularly liked the reds. My first challenge was to find a wine for the tasting. I didn’t want anything expensive. 

We tried Old Vine Red from California.  

So the lesson began with opening the bottle.  

I learned that we needed to let the wine breathe.  This is achieved by allowing more air to reach the wine.  To help process we poured the wine into the glass from distance of several inches. Also the glass should be wide to have a larger expanse for the wine to, you guessed it, breathe. When you see a wine connoisseur swirl the wine in the glass they are allowing the wine to mix with the surrounding air to bring the flavor of the wine to the surface.

I did all that.

I learned you never judge a wine by the first taste.  Always take a sip and let the taste reach all of the mouth.  The wine overpowers the taste buds. Now I took a second. The second was much of what the wine was there to offer me. The bitterness was gone and replaced with a delicate sweetness combined with oak and…was it pepper? I’m not sure. I just know hidden flavors came forth to give mystery to the pleasure of the wine. Time mellowed out the wine even more and it became even more enjoyable.

           

After a few swallows of the wine we ate a piece of cheese. This gave the wine an even more interesting taste. Then I tried a piece of chocolate. The wine took on a bitter taste.

Now when I go out to eat I can order a glass of wine, perhaps a Pinot or a Merlot or a Cabernet, and continue this lesson. I can take a wine tasting class at a winery here in the Twin Cities or Napa or even France, (why not!) and look for the subtle differences in the bouquet. I am certainly not an expert but I know something of the science now.

What a wonderful second day of something new. I have learned what makes the true red wine enthusiast so enamored with something so lowly as a fermented grape. It is so much more than that. It is chemistry and enchantment.

Sincerely,

Jeanne Mulcare 

Old New Me

New Blank Document

April 5, 2013

            I am fifty-eight and have come to a point in my life where I feel nothing is new. I need to find a remedy for this illness of mine. This is it. Everyday I will find something new. I am a new blank document.

            Today I have the day off. The sun is shining the way it does in the spring, still low in the sky but not as low as wintertime. The buds are new. I see them just crawling out from the stem but not yet bursting forth. It’s still too cold. It’s a cold spring.

           

            The neighbor and I chatted. He told me that Barb, his neighbor,

told him that I needed the lower branches on my very, very big pine in the front taken off. He was more than glad to help and told me someday I would come home and they would be gone. I almost cried and thanked him most graciously.

           First day, easy peasy. 

           Sincerely,

           J S Mulcare