Thanks, Dave WhamondNot Quite Wordless Wednesday
Thanks, Dave WhamondCategory Archives: Seasonal
Thanks, Dave WhamondBrrrrrrrrrr
I had a blissfully hot shower this morning. I closed the bathroom door and kept all that hot, moist air inside. Ahhh.
Winter has come to South Puffin.
Wind chill advisories went up on Saturday night for “feels like” temps of 28-32°F. In South Florida.
That was up in the United States so it never actually dropped that low here. But it has been that windy. I put the blanket on the bed Saturday night and laid out my flannel shirt for Sunday.
Most houses in the Keys don’t have central heat so when the outside temperature drops, the inside temp follows. Up to North Puffin it was 9° Sunday morning and partly cloudy with a 30% chance of snow, although all the snow on the radar was over New Hampshire and Maine. The forecast 19° high temp there was not a warming trend.
It was 52° here after a couple hours of solar heating and the Wind Advisory stayed in effect for winds from the North at 15-25 mph with gusts to 35-40. Same 10° thermometer climb here Sunday as up north. We went all the way to 63°.
We broke our fast at the Cracked Conch. The old fogies who gather there on Sunday mornings always take over the “Crank Corner,” a counter out on the deck.
Noooooooo.
Everybody moved inside. The Conch doesn’t have air conditioning but they do have windows. All the windows were shut. And, it turns out, they have heat which was turned on!
Whoda thunk it?
I spent the day yesterday in the living room, reading and poking the ‘puter. Having the patio stone1 in my actual lap was quite nice. I did cover my feet with a blanket although the temp rose to 56° outside and 60°(!) on the porch.
My next door neighbor has company. They had all the doors open there when he got up yesterday morning; he was seriously cold. He complained a bit about that when he came over to warm up. “I’ll do outside when it drops to 70°,” he said. “I don’t do 68°!”
My lap blanket felt pretty good.
It got even colder overnight. I woke sometime in the darkest hours and thought about getting up for the second blankie. I didn’t because it was all the way at the other end of the house. I guess I didn’t need it but it surely was cold this morning. 60° here in the sunroom first thing. It was 54° and mostly clear when I arose at sunrise. We’re allegedly headed for a high of 70° but with a windchill as low as about 45° on breezes from the NNE at 20-25 mph. 16 mph “breeze” right now.
I don’t understand why my friends in North Puffin aren’t more sympathetic.
1Patio Stone: Liz Arden’s pet name for my 26 pound square, black, laptop with its 17″ screen. It puts out a fair dinkum amount of heat.
Merry Christmas, Everyone!
In Charlotte, Vermont, in 2008, a school got hammered to take down its candy cane decorations because a grinch there says they have an overt Christmas message. Federal Reserve examiners in 2010 told a hometown bank that it must remove crosses, Bible verses, and Christmas buttons because they could be offensive. The Fed says the Christian paraphernalia violated federal bank regulations. This year, the owner of a New Jersey business faces thousands in fines because he installed a 40-foot tall inflatable Santa Claus on his retail store rooftop. CANDY CANES and SANTA! The Menorah and the Glitter Moon and Star for Ramadan probably stayed up at the school, though.
Every radio station has defaulted to Christmas music. I’m surprised we haven’t lost that, too. I don’t particularly like Christmas music but my radio has an off switch. I don’t have to listen to it if I don’t want to.
I was raised in a family that was Quaker on one side, Presbyterian on the other. I may not be as organized now as I was when I reached the age of accountability and joined the Presbyterian church but I am still a Christian. And, of course, a WASP.
You don’t have to be either.
Tomorrow is the day Christians celebrate the birth of the Christ child and the meaning of Christianity. It was a pretty big day before the stock exchange took it over.
It doesn’t mean Do unto all the other religions, then cut out. Unless you are a Member of Congress.
Here’s the thing. If you offer food to the monks on Vesak, Buddha’s Birthday, I will honor your commitment to the poor. If you celebrate Diwali, the Festival of Lights, I will honor with you the victory of Lord Ram over the demon-king Ravana. If you fast during Ramadan when the Qur’an was revealed to Mohammad, I will honor your patience and humility. If you celebrate the most solemn and important of Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur, I will honor your atonement and repentance. If you light the candles of Kwanzaa, I will help you honor your heritage. And if you are a lib’rul atheist, I will not proselytize.
That maybe the most important message.
Not one American soldier in Afganistan has forced any man, woman, or child to convert to Christianity at the point of a gun this year.
You don’t have to be a Buddhist, a Hindu, Islamic, a Jew, a Kwanzaan celebrant, or an atheist. It is time, on this Christian holy day, to let Christians be Christians.
My right to impose my own beliefs stops at my property line (or the end of my nose when I’m out in public). The Charlotte, Vermont, grinch’s right to his own idiocy stops at pretty much the same place. It is time to stop accepting that “politically correct” credo and start honoring the true message of Christmas.
Scythian philosopher Anacharsis wrote in the 6th century BCE, “Wise men argue causes, and fools decide them.”
Peace.
This column originally appeared on Christmas Day, 2008. It required very little updating.
Wordless Wednesday
Giving Thanks
AAA predicts that 43.6 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from home during the holiday weekend. That’s up about 1% over the 43.3 million who traveled last year, mostly because of “lower gas prices.” This is the fourth consecutive year for holiday travel growth since 2008, when Thanksgiving travel plummeted 25% as the economy tanked. Nationally, 90% of travelers will take to the road rather than fly, up about half a percent.
The Associated Press says “filling up the tank will take less money than people expected” when AAA conducted the survey early last month “because of a dramatic drop in gas prices.”
Dramatic? Drop?
Gasoline cost $2.87/gallon for Thanksgiving, 2010.
Gasoline cost a record $3.32/gallon on Thanksgiving Day last year.
How is it that gas prices “dropping” to $3.44 is better?
Ben Franklin thought the turkey should be America’s bird so I’m thankful to have found a big inflatable turkey in a local yard for this week. The real Thanksgiving column is here.
We are staying put for the day but I am thankful that we have friends coming from afar. Joe will join us. He lives next door. Ed says he is very, very hungry. He lives across the street.