What our backyard shed looks like when the wind picks up after over thirty inches (0.8 meters) of snow yesterday.
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A few photos from shoveling part six, following up from my post with photos from earlier in the day:
The snow is supposed to continue until at least midnight and the wind has started to pick up. I am about to go out for shoveling session seven. We are all hoping that we don’t get heavy winds. Big snowstorm is preferable to blizzard.
Yesterday, when we were standing in the cold outside Claudia Tenney’s office, the cold seemed a curse, but it was a (bit of a) blessing in disguise.
Today, here in the Binghamton (NY) area, we are experiencing a nor’easter, which is a storm that comes up the Atlantic coast and whose rotation results in winds from the northeast. This is the strongest we have had in many years, perhaps because it was strengthened by a second low pressure system coming from the west.
The tricky thing about forecasting nor’easters is that the exact track of the storm makes a huge difference in the snowfall amount. The prediction had been that we were going to get one to three inches starting about midnight, with an additional eight to ten during the day.
I set my alarm to get up in the pre-dawn darkness – insert grumbling about Daylight Saving Time here – to shovel the driveway to get to an morning appointment. I looked out the front door to find not one to three inches, but a foot (about a third of a meter) already on the ground with heavy snow continuing, sometimes at a rate of two to three inches an hour.
Apparently, the storm had tracked further west than anticipated – and then stalled. Fortunately, the cold from the day before was holding, though, so while we are getting A LOT of snow, it is light and fluffy, not the heavy, wet snow that mixes with sleet and freezing rain and causes power outages.
Still, it is daunting to shovel so much of it…
I worked for an hour and didn’t even have one lane of the driveway clear when I cam in to rest.
The appointment with E’s obstetrician’s office was cancelled because the office was closed, along with just about everything else in the county. The governor instituted a travel ban and is calling out the National Guard to help in the storm cleanup. We may get as much as thirty inches of snow , which I can believe, given that we have almost two feet on the ground as I write this in mid-afternoon.
(Just in case you had forgotten about E’s pregnancy – I had forgotten myself that I had written about it – you can read some of the backstory here.)
I’ve spent the day alternating shoveling time with rest and recovery time. I am very grateful that, during shoveling round four, our next-door neighbors came to help with their snowblower. Ordinarily, B uses our big Ariens snowblower that my dad gave us when he no longer needed it to clear snow for us and the neighbors, but B is away on business, the Ariens is currently in need of repair, and I am not strong enough to use it. They were able to clear the second pass of snowplow pile blocking the end of the driveway and make an initial path to the front stairs and mailbox, although there isn’t going to be any mail delivery today. Sometimes, the “neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night” bit doesn’t hold.
I need to get out there for round six now. I am trying to keep the driveway and path clear enough that we could get out in case of emergency. It is getting harder because the snow banks are getting higher than my head, so it is hard to throw the snow over them. I have left myself a little extra space for the driveway, in case of bank mini-avalanche, but I am dreading when the snow slides off the metal garage roof and lands in a giant pile in the driveway. Maybe it will wait until tomorrow, or Thursday, or even better, Friday, when B will return home.
Representative Tenney has refused repeated invitations to meet with constituents and to attend town hall meetings on this topic, so there was a planned event near her office this morning to try again to get our message to her.
I arrived early and met up with several people in the hall outside her office. The office door was locked, but there was a doorbell and people, presumably staff, were arriving and being let in.
To our surprise, Rep. Tenney herself appeared, hurried past us, and tried to open the locked door, before a staffer arrived to let her in. She did not acknowledge that there were constituents of hers standing there with our signs about saving our health care.
Word got to us that a larger group had gathered down in the first floor atrium, so we went to join them, just as they were being re-located to the outdoors, with temperatures in the teens Fahrenheit.
But, we, the people, are intrepid and would not be silenced! We had our signs, some media coverage, leadership from Citizen Action, and a portable sound system. People were sharing stories about how the Affordable Care Act had helped them and what it would mean to their health and their lives to lose the health insurance and medical care access they had gained through the ACA, detailing specific problems with the current House Republican bills dealing with health care, and writing messages to deliver to Tenney’s office (despite it being so cold that our pens weren’t working). We were supposed to be able to deliver messages to the office in groups no larger than three people.
When I went back into the building to warm up, one of the longtime leaders in the Catholic social justice community was on her way to the office, so I joined her. While we were still in the hallway, a woman who was with the management of the building met us, saying that Representative Tenney was no longer accepting visitors to her office, that she did not want us there, and that she was calling the police so that we could not gather outside the building, either. (She also told us that Representative Tenney was in Washington, which was odd as it certainly looked like her entering the office an hour earlier and we had thought that the official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the office was scheduled for today.)
We went back outside and stood our ground. We thought that the entrance plaza where we were gathered was public property and we were not blocking the entrance to the building, so we were within our rights of assembly, freedom of speech, and petition. Two police officers arrived, spoke to a couple of people from our group, and confirmed that we were fine to continue as we were.
Rep. Tenney is apparently not very familiar with the law.
By trying to silence us, she actually gave us an even stronger voice for our message as the rally went on longer than anticipated and will draw more media attention.
She also did not endear herself to the other tenants in the building because she had the management lock the main doors into the building, presumably to keep her constituents at bay. I’m sure the other offices, including the Chamber of Commerce, were not amused about the inconvenience to their clients.
So, Representative Tenney, I ask you once again to vote against any repeal of the Affordable Care Act and to take action to enhance the ACA by permanently securing Medicaid expansion in all states, by making a public option available to everyone, and by negotiating drug prices for Medicare and other public programs so that medications become more affordable.
My thanks to my fellow protesters, the great people of Citizen Action, the Binghamton police officers, and the kind people of Bistro 163, the new coffee shop and boutique that is tucked next to Metrocenter who gave us free coffee and a place to warm up.
And Representative Tenney, you will be hearing more from us, your constituents, on health care and many other vital issues.
I am not a fan of Daylight Saving Time, which started today in most of the United States.
It is not an accurate name. The amount of daylight is determined by astronomy, not by clocks. Naming the time of sunrise and sunset differently does not change the time between those two events.
What most annoys me, though, is waking up in the dark again. I had just gotten to the point where I was waking up to the light of dawn, which I find more energizing, and now I am instantly back into mid-winter waking-to-darkness.
This is not helped by the fact that we are having a cold snap and may soon have the most snow we have had in weeks, depending on the track of a developing nor’easter.
I know that many people will argue that having it be light longer in the evening makes up for the dark mornings, but we had already been able to eat dinner in natural light, although I admit that we tend to eat dinner on the early side.
By June, it won’t be fully dark until after 9 PM, which makes our usual 10 PM bedtime feel like we are children, being put to bed as soon as evening falls.
Daylight Saving Time, especially the current US implementation, also causes issues with long-distance communications. E’s daily call time with her employer in Hawai’i will shift. B’s daily 6 AM conference call with colleagues in India (thankfully) stays at 6 AM for him, but his India team has to change the time at which they call. Because the US extended the dates of DST, for the next three weeks, US time will be out of sync with many of the countries that observe DST using the original dates.
It would be so much simpler if we just dropped the whole concept and left our clocks alone.
Daylight doesn’t care, but I do.
How do you feel about Daylight Saving Time? Is it observed where you are?
This post is going to be very short, because I just spent a bunch of time writing a post about the Sappho’s Circle poetry reading last night.
I guess the other thing I should mention is that I had to adjust the mike last night because I am so short…
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This short and sweet post was written in response to Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week, which was “short.” Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/03/10/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-mar-1117/
Last night, Sappho’s Circle, a women’s poetry workshop convened by Heather Dorn, hosted a poetry reading at the Bundy Museum. The Bundy is our home and we decided to do the reading during Women’s History Month, as part of their current emphasis on women’s issues, particularly suffrage.
We chose to each read a poem from a woman poet whom we admire, followed by a poem or two of our own. I chose to read “The Bleeding-heart” by Mary Oliver. I admire her talent for melding nature imagery with insights into the human condition. I paired it with my poem “Discovery” which is thematically related – by springtime, by heirloom flowers, and by family connections.
After Sappho’s Circle members had read, we opened the floor. We were thrilled to have several poets share work with us. I was especially happy that three of the Grapevine Group, formerly the Bunn Hill Poets, read. There is significant overlap between Grapevine, which meets a couple of times a month to workshop our poems, and Sappho’s Circle, so it was nice to have support from our poet-friends and give them an opportunity to join in the fun.
And it was tremendously fun!
And the poems were amazing! Several of the participants are great performers and I admired their skill in engaging us with their movement, pacing, pitch, and tone. Many of the poets also used the opportunity to present some of their edgier work, using language that I, small-town-New-England bred, good-little-Catholic-girl, would never be able to pull off.
I am honored to have been a part of the reading. I can barely believe that I get to be among so many helpful, talented poets on a regular basis. I am especially indebted to Heather, who, when she was assistant director of the Binghamton Poetry Project, connected me to what is now the Grapevine critique group, and who started Sappho’s Circle to foster women poets who want to publish their work.
I am a lucky poet!
“Only love can safely handle power.”
~~~Richard Rohr
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Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/03/08/one-liner-wednesday-lemons/
In recent weeks, my printer has been getting increasingly temperamental, until, last week, it decided not to recognize its black ink cartridge altogether. I resorted to printing text in flashy colors, while trying head cleaning and other suggestions to get the black ink flowing again.
Over the weekend, B, who is much techier than I will ever be, tried physically cleaning the printheads, and taking parts out, and whatever, but it appears the old printer is not coming back to life. The cost of the replacement part is almost as much as a new printer, so I set out yesterday to buy a new printer/copier/scanner.
I looked online first and entered the store with my choices narrowed to two. I dutifully looked at the floor samples, which seemed to confirm that the main reason for the price differential between the two was printing speed, but I thought I should ask someone who worked there.
Usually in the tech department, employees wander about asking if you need help, but I had to go find someone. Unfortunately, the someone I found was new and didn’t seem to have a clue about printers! Still, I eventually confirmed the information, chose the slower, less expensive model, bought the requisite ink cartridges, and headed for home.
Ordinarily, B does the tech setup, but he is away on business right now, so it was up to me to set the printer up, or face not being able to print out copies of our tax returns and other important documents that I need this week.
The start of the process was not auspicious, as I needed E’s help to get the printer out of the box. Those styrofoam forms are tight!
I did manage to follow the instructions, which, fortunately, had sentences as well as drawings. I am notoriously bad at interpreting drawings.
And, everything went smoothly!
Unlike our prior printer which was supposed to be wireless but which I had to have connected by wire to my desktop for it to actually print anything, this printer is operating with just its power cord plugged in. We can put apps on our phones and tablets for access, too, as well as send documents to our printer’s very own email address. Fancy! (OK – I know other people have had things like this for years, but it’s a first for me.)
So, yay for hard copy! Today, I printed a poem that I need for a reading on Friday. (More on that later.)
Maybe, tomorrow, I’ll tackle those tax returns…
This resonates with me. Thank you, Nancy, for your writing and your witness as we make our way in these troubled and troubling times.
Source: Making Art in the Age of Trump
Joanne Corey 