I Love This Weather

Sorry not sorry, I love this weather.

If you live in North America., you may have noticed a slight change in the temperature and precipitation across the continent as a large chunk of the polar vortex spun off and lurched drunkenly toward the equator like a bro at a frat party crashing toward the DJ station to loudly demand "Livin On a Prayer" for the umpteenth time (Jesus, there goes my metaphor...), changing a rainy, muddy winter into an instant Ice Age. Virtually everywhere in the lower 48 has been effected. The Deep South is in a deep freeze. Chicago is colder than most of Alaska. The roads are ice, the pipes are freezing, kids are being kept home from school simply because of the temperature.

And I love it.

It's a stark scene - the glaring, blinding white of the snow under a pale sun in a hard sky, making the shadows long and blue. The air is dry and shockingly cold; every breath is sharp in the throat, and the wind bites into my cheeks and wraps the cold around my legs. My beard and mustache crackles with frozen condensation. The wind whistles intermittently through the creaking power lines, while in the distance a crow sounds off, rowing between the black scrawl of the naked treetops. When this part of winter comes, I'd rather be in the woods, among the trees. There's something about winter the sun shining low between the trunks of white pines that gives me a feeling I can't describe, a quiet serenity tinged with longing, for what I don't know...even in the sunshine, the air is filled with tiny ice particles called "diamond dust", caused when moisture precipitates directly from the air.

My loved ones call me crazy - why would anyone go out of the house in this weather unless forced to? But I feel like I operate best at 10 below. I used to camp in this weather. I've figured out the best configuration of layers of coats, long underwear, socks and hats to create a bubble of cozy warmth - not cold enough to shiver, but not warm enough to sweat: perfect homeostasis. I could comfortably chop wood, build a fire, set up a tent, sleep comfortably all night, then wake up in the morning to take a hike. Maybe I'm bragging, but more I just wish I could communicate the beauty I see in the harsh winter and have someone understand.

I wish it could stay like this all winter (apparently it's like this in Minnesota), but this is Michigan...by next week we're looking at above-freezing temps: rainy, wet, dismal. I honestly think 40⁰ and raining is more hazardous than subzero and dry - getting wet will kill you a lot faster. And yeah, I get that a lot of people will be relieved with the rising temperatures - people who lost power or heat, and especially the unhoused. It's selfish to want this harsh weather for my own enjoyment. And yet there's something in me that wants to be uncomfortable, to experience something austere, to experience a slice of "Ice Age" existence. I think I'm definitely a capital-R Romantic, seeking the Sublime in nature; it might be anachronistic and silly, but it's a huge part of who I am.

The Problem with Reconstructing Deinonychus

So as you may know, I am partly obsessed with dinosaurs. Scratch that - there's a small lobe of my brain devoted to dinosaurs. I love em, God help me. I even have a super-double-plus-top-secret dinosaur comic maybe in the works...but you didn't hear it from me. Anywho... Part of my problem is in the reconstruction of said prehistoric beasties, namely those icons of American dino-obsession, Deinonychus ( Velociraptor to you Jurassic Park aficionados...it's not just a Hollywood bastardization, there's a complicated story behind it which I covered in this old post ). Now, we all know what Deinonychus looked like: wolf-size, sleek, toothsome head balanced by a long tail, grasping front claws and of course the eponymous "terrible claw" on its hind foot. The shape is burned into our collective unconscious; you could construct the most fantastic amalgam of different bits and pieces, but as long as you include the sickle-claw, you're golden. The devil, of

Artist Spotlight: Tom Eaton

I wanted to do a quick artist spotlight on Tom Eaton, best known for his work in Boy's Life Magazine. I used to have a subscription to Boy's Life when I was a kid; unfortunately I didn't keep any of them, as they just weren't...I don't know, not really worth keeping. I just remember it as being 90% toy advertisements, some "how to get along with others" advice, the same camping article reprinted 20 million times, and some half-funny comics. As the years went on, the advertisements got bigger and louder, the articles became less interesting, and the comics section got shorter and shorter. But there was one gem hidden in the midst of the mediocrity: artist Tom Eaton. He wrote and illustrated "The Wacky Adventures of Pedro" ( BL's burro mascot), "Dink & Duff", and myriad other comics, crossword puzzles, games, and short pieces. He was the magazine's resident cartoonist, and about the only reason I actually read the magazi

The Horrendous Space Kablooie!

Sorry, Bill Watterson, but I just couldn't resist using this one...all hail Calvin and Hobbes! This comic illustrates a point that confronts us when we attempt to speak about the titanic phenomena occurring in the universe every day. We can speak of a supernova exploding "with the force of x megaton bombs", or a star that "could hold a million of our suns"...but ultimately all this is meaningless. When the standard unit of interstellar measurement, the light year, is about 8.7 x 10¹² miles, human language (and thus, comprehension) just sort of...blanks out. Here's a lovely example: I'm currently watching a JINA-CEE video about novas in parasitic binary star systems . Essentially, a small, dense star (such as a neutron star) will form an orbital relationship with a larger, less-dense giant. The denser of the two will start vacuuming material off its host, adding to its mass; however, because of its size, it compresses the material into its "

The Penguin

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