Been a tad lazy BLOGwise. Catching up on tax, housekeeping and
other pesky chores one tends to stuff into the sock drawer of the mind.
As New England endures another “storm of the century,”
Montana and the west bask in balmy 40+F temps. Actually that was yesterday.
This morning it's minus 5. In that regard, as a public service I
reproduce here, for the benefit of my eastern and offshore friends, snow depth definitions
used in the mountain west:
0-6” flurries
6-12” dusting
12-18” light snow
18-24” snow
>24” dump
And yes, I understand that east and west, north and south,
view and respond to weather in significantly different ways. But I can’t help
recalling, in the face of New York/New England obsessing over an “up to 2
feet” storm, that shortly before I left Georgetown Colorado in 2009, after a
mild winter (mild for the Rocky Mountain west), an April storm dumped 7 feet
(yes, 84”) on the town and the Continental Divide less than 10 miles west. Locals
took it all in stride. Actually closed I-70 for several hours to retrieve shell-shocked tourists…
Stumbled on an interesting stat the other day. In 1930 a
3-minute coast-to-coast phone call cost $8.75 and a first class letter was
2-cents. Today the letter cost $0.45 and a call on one of the low-cost carriers
can be as low as 2-cents/minute. Of course the telecommunications industry is
private sector and the Post Office is a government institution, effectively a monopoly,
protected from the anti-trust laws that restrict the private sector from
predatory practices. And yes, a multiplicity of factors in play here, but perhaps
a laissez faire lesson as well?
I’ve been occasionally typecast as a private (even
unsociable) character, with some justification. Soaking in the hot spring pool
I note that perfect (and not so perfect) strangers typically take about 90
seconds before striking up conversations while I marinate in solitude. But eves-dropping on these animated exchanges leaves me mercifully thankful that I am
roundly ignored. Highlights of the week include speculation among 2 growth
stunted Baby Boomers on whether Batman could hold his own against Superman, and
whether Robin’s services would be required, AND a heated discussion among 4
blue-coiffed matrons over the relative merits of nutmeg in Brown Betty. Seems "small talk" is being elevated (or demoted) to new heights (depths). I hereby create a new term to mark this evolution, "nano-talk."
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| Grand-puppies Tuna and Brooke |
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| Feed me! |
Back in Pray after sitting my grand puppies in Bozeman over the weekend, 2 yellow labs of enormous energy and enthusiasm, and highly developed internal chronographs, particularly as it relates to nourishment. The 4-am feeding finds them especially focused, a chore I have not undertaken for nearly 3 decades when progeny transitioned from lait maternel to bottle.
