The Signal Returns

Last Friday afternoon there was a thunderstorm here at Schloss Bodissey. As storms go, it was a nothingburger — a little bit of lightning, a little bit of thunder, a brief but heavy downpour, and no wind to speak of. Even if I had thought of it, I wouldn’t have put up a warning post about it. There was no way the power would be knocked out by that storm.

And it wasn’t. The lights didn’t even flicker. But I didn’t reckon on the phone company.

The phone and internet both went out during the brief downpour. I thought they would surely come back on quickly, after a negligible storm like that one. And so I waited. And waited. Fixed dinner and waited. Then I went to bed.

The next day (Saturday) the phone was still out. That day happened to be the fourth anniversary of Dymphna’s death, so I kept to my planned schedule. In the afternoon I went down to the church to put fresh flowers (all of them hers, picked from our yard) on her grave. Then I walked across the road to the country store, learned that their phone was working, and asked to use it to call the phone company. The young lady working the cash register was very kind and helpful.

As usual, I had to go through a labyrinth of digital-touch tone menus, beginning with not pressing 2 por español. I had to punch in my phone number. I had to punch in the last four digits of my social. Then it wanted me to punch in a number where I could be reached. I didn’t have one, of course, but I had to give them one to go any further, so I punched in the future Baron’s phone number. Then I went through a series of punch 1 or punch 2 choices that I can’t remember. Then the robot voice told me to wait while it checked my service, and to see if I already had an open repair ticket (I didn’t).

Finally I was put through to a human being in Bangladesh or Kolkata, with a thick Bengali accent and an inferior fidelity phone connection, all while other Apus could be heard babbling in the background. As a result I was only able to understand about 50% of what he said, but it didn’t really matter, because I’ve been through the drill so many times before.

First he asked me the same questions that I’d just punched in all the numbers for. Evidently the robot doesn’t pass on any information to the Gunga Dins who have to talk to customers, so I had to tell him all that stuff all over again. Only then could he pull up my account and look into the issue.

He then told me what I knew all along: there was an area outage as a result of the storm.

“But Baron,” you say, “if you knew it all along, why did you bother going through all that hair-tearing rigmarole with the phone company?”

Because I needed one piece of information: the estimated time when repairs would be completed. I knew from long experience that it would be the final thing that Jamshid would tell me.

And he did: “Mr. Edward [they always call me Mr. Edward; they don’t really get the distinction between first and last names], the estimated time when the repairs will be completed is Monday June 19 at 1:30pm.”

And sure enough, service was restored today ahead of schedule, at about 10am. The signal has returned.

That was on Saturday, so I had two more days to twiddle my thumbs and watch DVDs while my email piled up and people waited for their comments to be approved. During that time I thought about the #!@%*&@?#!! phone company, and how it could possibly take three days to rectify the effects of an itty-bitty trifle of rain. And I think I figured it out.

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Illegal Immigrant Canadian Smoke

This is what it looks like here in Central Virginia today:


(article here)

The Canadian smoke is really thick right now. I noticed the smell of it for the first time today, acrid and unpleasant. The sunlight is quite muted and orange, and I can’t see the mountains.

We had a lot of rain last night, and I thought that might wash some of it out, but it doesn’t seem to have had an effect.

My original plan was to mow the lawn today, but I think any sustained exercise outside is probably a bad idea.

This is a useful website: AirNow.gov. It has a map that shows the air quality zones, and the locations of all the wildfires. You can zoom out, and it even includes Canada and Central America.

As of right now my AQI is 216, down a bit from the highest reading I saw, which was 229. I checked out a bunch of locations on the East Coast, and the Charlottesville area had the highest reading of any of them, higher than New York, DC, or Richmond. We drew the short straw this time.

There’s an area up by the Hudson Bay that has the worst quality of all. Fortunately, almost nobody lives up there.

From the Nation Weather Service air quality alert:

Due to Canadian wildfires, smoke is prevalent in the Mid-Atlantic region, including the greater Baltimore and Washington metropolitan areas. Under northerly winds, smoke will continue to be pushed south over our area. Thicker smoke will continue to overspread portions of the area, resulting in poor air quality and visibility potentially less than 1 mile. Some improvement is likely through the day, but the smoke likely will continue to affect the area at times until a front on Friday potentially brings some reprieve to fine particle concentrations.

I’m going to stay in the house with the central air on, and be glad I don’t have to work outside in this.

BR-R-R-R-R-R! (Again)

As a follow-up to last month’s post about a record cold snap at the South Pole, here’s another report about the expanding ice shelf in Antarctica.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from Report24:

Attention climate crackpots: 661 gigatons more mass — Antarctic ice shelf continues to grow

Scientists have found that the ice shelf around Antarctica expanded significantly from 2009 to 2019. Since this does not correspond to the common narrative of climate fanatics, the mainstream will certainly largely ignore it.

For decades climate fanatics have drummed into our heads that the polar ice caps are melting and that sea levels will rise dramatically as a result. But somehow the climate propaganda doesn’t accord with reality, as our reports on the Arctic (e.g. here and here) also show. In the Antarctic, people seem to be a long way from being ice-free too.

Three climate scientists from the University of Leeds were now using satellite data to check the condition of the ice shelf in Antarctica. They examined the annual calving position and area of 34 ice sheets, which together make up around 80% of the southernmost continent’s coastline. Among other things, they found that the reduction in area in the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica by 6,693 km² and 5,563 km², respectively, became offset by the increase in East Antarctica by 3,532 km² and 14,028 km² on the large Ross and Ronne-Filchner ice shelves. The largest decline occurred on the Larsen C Ice Shelf, where 5,917 km² was lost in a single calving event that made alarming headlines around the world. The biggest increase, , which was reported somewhat less extensively in the media, was the 5,889 km² advance on the Ronne ice shelf.

The ice shelves provide important support for the glaciers behind them, and these areas are subject to large natural fluctuations. The climate fanatics like to pick large incursions into the sea to support their theories, while studiously ignoring growth in other areas. A very selective approach, which in no way even remotely reflects reality. This is what it looks like:

A total of 18 ice shelves are said to have retreated and 16 larger platforms increased in area. In total, the shelves have gained 661 gigatons in mass over the decade. The scientists note that using a “stable” process, meaning no change in any variable, would result in an estimate of a significant loss over that period. They argue that their work demonstrates the importance of using “time-varying observations of calving flow to measure change.”

One of the reasons for the ice melt in the western part of Antarctica is likely to be various volcanoes. 91 of them were not discovered until a few years ago, bringing the total number of active volcanoes there to 138. The ice melt in this region has absolutely nothing to do with the ominous “climate change” itself. A fact that scientists also pointed out in a study. Another paper also shows that since reliable satellite measurements began, there have been “no significant changes” in the annual sea ice coverage in Antarctica.

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BR-R-R-R-R-R!

It’s brass monkey weather in Antarctica this fall.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from Report24. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:

Extreme cold in Antarctica is coming earlier than expected this year

Apparently there are too many measuring stations from different nations in Antarctica, so that fraud in the sense of climate madness is not possible. Since the beginning of May, temperatures as low as -76.4°C [-105.5°F] have been measured at the Vostok research station. However, is still autumn in the current season of the southern hemisphere. Low temperatures are unusual for this time of year. The norm for the location in May is -61°C to -64°C [-77°F to -83°F].

Climate fanatics might consider it a success. Is it because they glue themselves to the ground in European cities that temperatures are dropping at the South Pole? Hardly likely. However, it is a proven fact that the temperatures in the Antarctic in 2023 will be significantly lower than the ten-year average. Between 2005 and 2015, temperatures between -61°C and -64°C were measured for the month of May.

Extreme cold should not be reached for months

The lowest temperatures are usually measured in Vostok when the northern hemisphere has its hottest summer — i.e. July, August and sometimes September. The fact that the Antarctic winter broke out in May with such temperatures is considered a special feature. The Russian measuring station was set up in 1957 at a distance of 1,300 kilometers from the South Pole at an altitude of 3,500 meters. The previous negative temperature record is said to have been reached on July 28, 1997 with -91°C [-132°F] (Wikipedia speaks of “unconfirmed”, July 21, 1983 with -89.2°C is confirmed). The warmest day in recorded history was January 5, 1974 with “only” -14°C [+7°F].

Of course, spot temperature records are due to “weather” and not the “climate” that is supposed to be warming, and from which we are all supposed to die unless we regress to a pre-industrial age in trees and in caves. At least that is the plan of the climate apocalypticists — although many of them also dream of a depopulation of the earth.

Temperatures in Antarctica have been falling for 40 years

As early as 2021, scientists reported the “coldest winter season in more than 60 years” in Antarctica. Since this trend has been emerging since 2021, one could cautiously speak of “climate” here. It would be time for politicians to come to their senses and stop destroying the wealth of Western countries and citing some fictitious climate targets as the reason for doing so. [But that would throw a spanner into the works of the Evil Globalist Agenda, and we can’t have that, now, can we?]

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The Next Scam: Climate Refugees

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from Junge Freiheit. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:

Residents of island countries

Now Germany is supposed to take in “Climate Refugees”

Does Germany bear responsibility for the inhabitants of island states who have to leave their homes because of global warming? Experts propose a “climate passport” that entitles people to permanent residence in the Federal Republic. [Can anyone show me one island, besides Atlantis and those that the mainstream media have peddled for years as “sinking”, that has sunk into the Ocean in the last two thousand years? And by that I don’t mean through the stupidity of man because of coral reef mining and land-erosion along the coastline or volcanic or other seismic events.]

Berlin

The German Advisory Council on Integration and Migration (SVR) has called on the federal government to prepare for the acceptance of “climate refugees”. “If it is not possible to curb climate change, climate migration will continue to increase on the one hand,” warned SVR Deputy Chairwoman Birgit Leyendecker, as reported by Spiegel.

Germany must take in those people whose homeland is no longer habitable due to climatic change. This particularly affects the people of island states because the sea level is rising there.

Permanent residence thanks to the “climate pass”

Specifically, the body that advises the federal government proposes introducing a “climate passport”. According to the experts, anyone who can show one should be able to enjoy permanent residence in Germany. [Now that will be another thriving business for the Soros Crime Family.]

Anyone who is only significantly, but not entirely, affected by climate change should receive a “climate card” that entitles them to a limited stay. When the most serious consequences have been eliminated, the migrants can return to their homeland. Adaptive measures would also have to be taken in such a case. What that could look like in concrete terms is still unclear.

Claudia Roth wants to give “climate refugees” German passports

A “climate work visa” is also planned. This is aimed at people without special qualifications, but who could show an employment contract. As for the “climate card”, the number must be capped.

The Greens member of the Bundestag Claudia Roth had previously spoken in 2019 about the prospects for “climate refugees” to stay. At the time, she demanded that they be given German citizenship. “The climate crisis is the cause of migration and flight — especially in the global south, which has contributed the least to global warming. Climate protection is therefore a question of global justice,” emphasized Roth. [Lots of cultural Marxist buzzwords, but not one shred of real evidence. Business as usual in the genocide game.]

Afterword from the translator:

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Baby, It’s Cold Outside

The doom-mongers of the Climate Change cult keep rending their garments about the imminent apocalypse being wrought by “global warming”, but the actual data from temperature measurements do not support their alarmist viewpoint: the trends forecasted by all the computer models fell well above the recorded temperatures for the last twenty years or so, and the trend line for the past eight years is flat.

But that doesn’t deter the fanatics, who habitually ignore real data in favor of the doom-predicting computer models that accord with their ideology. Thus the (wind-powered) global warming bark sails on full-speed towards the apocalypse, heedless of anything as trivial as reality.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from Report24. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:

No global warming for the last 8 years — Antarctica stable for 70 years

The climate fanatics’ house of cards continues to collapse. New data show there has been no global warming for more than eight years. The temperatures in the Antarctic have also remained largely stable for the past seven decades. Like the pandemic, the climate lie can only be sustained by censorship and state violence. [Which they enthusiastically embrace, as we’ve seen during the Plandemic.]

If the climate fanatics are to be believed, the Earth is threatened with a climate apocalypse in just a few decades. It would get significantly warmer, the glaciers and polar caps would melt and the sea level would rise by several meters. But somehow the global climate does not want to bow to the horror forecasts. We have already reported several times that the situation in the Arctic is still relaxed. But on the other side of the world — Antarctica — things are looking anything but catastrophic. And not only that: At the global level, there has been no overall warming in recent years, despite smaller regional peaks.

But first to Antarctica. Two more recent studies (from 2020 and from 2022) see no drastic temperature changes in the South Pole region. The researchers Singh and Polvani state in their study published in 2020: “The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades, although the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased monotonically.” While there were some warmer zones off the coast of West Antarctica, the eastern continental half actually got a little colder on a large scale.

Cinthya Bello and two of her research colleagues also noted a “cooling period over the last few decades” in the April 2022 issue of the International Journal of Climatology. They also write: “Statistical analysis of mean temperatures confirmed a trend toward cooling in summer and in monthly mean high temperatures during the 1990s for most of the weather stations whose data we analyzed.” So here, too, everything is far from what the climate fanatics have claimed in recent years.

A similar picture emerges at the global level. For the last 100 months (i.e. eight years and four months) there has been a virtual standstill in warming. For example, while 2016 was on average warmer than 2015, subsequent years have all been within natural seasonal variation, with 2020 being slightly warmer and 2021 and 2022 being slightly colder. This is shown by satellite data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, which Christopher Monckton of Brenchley processed for the Watts Up With That? portal.

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Joyeux Noël

And while I’m at it: Fröhliche Weihnachten, Feliz Navidad, and Merry Christmas.

The future Baron is here, and he is doing the cooking, which is fortunate for both of us. I may be somewhat truant in my posting today, but there will be a news feed tonight, as usual.

The Great Christmas Storm of ’22 only touched us lightly here in the Central Virginia Piedmont. We had a lot of cold rain on Thursday, and then the temperature plummeted all day Friday, with gale-force winds that flash-froze the mud. That night it got down to about 5°F (-15°C), and it stayed bitter all day yesterday. But it’s slightly above freezing today.

There was considerable ice and snow further to the north and west, with power outages and blizzard conditions. I consider myself fortunate to be here with nothing to worry about other than frozen ground and a car that is somewhat sluggish to start.

I laid in a good cellar in advance of the future Baron’s visit, so we will have a festive time.

I wish all my readers a glorious Yule.

Who Would Have Thought Climate Change Could Kill So Many People So Soon?

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this op-ed from Report24:

New justifications for the heart attack epidemic: forgetting to breathe while clearing snow

Massive excess mortality is recorded in all vaccination countries. Heart attacks are often behind the sudden and unexpected deaths of young people. While the German magazine Focus now suspects “mistakes made when shoveling snow” as the reason, many media see a generally higher risk of heart attack in winter cold. Apparently, this also happened in summer, when it was supposedly due to summer temperatures. or in New German, CLIMATE CHANGE.

A commentary by Willi Huber

While the WHO insists (see here) that excess mortality is generally due to climate change, this excuse doesn’t really work in the bitterly cold December. This year’s winter appears to have been so cold and snowy that for the first time in many years, the hoax of the “hottest month on record” has not been attempted.

Now the German magazine Focus does not explain that terrible, sometimes fatal side effects occur as a result of the mRNA vaccination experiment. No, the background of the “strange and inexplicable” deaths must once again be veiled. This time, shoveling snow serves as an excuse. Yes, who doesn’t know them? The tens of thousands of snow shovel deaths, year after year. Grandma already warned against it — or was it Grandpa? Oh, whatever.

Three tips that really pack a punch

You have to avoid three mistakes in order to prevent a heart attack while shoveling snow. First of all, the thrice-fact-checked, reputable and independent journalists inform us that risk factor #1 is “the cold”. In winter, who would have thought? If blood vessels constrict because of the winter cold, there would be a risk of a heart attack. Point two, “wrong breathing”. You know, once you breathed wrong, already — bang! — Heart attack. You shouldn’t hold your breath when you’re exerting yourself, explains the lady in the carefully-produced Focus service video. Remember that! And third, drum roll: “Snow clearing in the morning”. That would be so exhausting that there is a risk of cardiac arrhythmia and ventricular fibrillation. Understood.

Equally entertaining are the statements that haunt the entire German-speaking media landscape as part of the campaign. An example of this is the Schweizer Blick, representative of many others who report almost identically:

The winter cold would lead to an increased risk of heart attack. Of course, the cold is not alone in this. Your friend, the summer heat is just as dangerous as cold showers, hot showers, too much joy and the like. Kindly puts the view into perspective that this only affects people who are already at increased risk, such as diabetics, hypertension patients and smokers.

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The Hard Land of the Winter

The energy crisis in Poland and Germany has reached the point that citizens are basically grabbing anything that’s combustible they can get their hands on, and burning it to heat their houses.

It makes me wonder how readily Extinction Rebellion activists burn…

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from Report24:

Already everyday life in Poland: When will the Germans start burning garbage for heating?

In Poland, more and more people are starting to burn garbage to heat their homes because of the energy crisis. It is reported from Warsaw that the smell of burning garbage hangs over the city every day. How long will it be before the Germans put everything they can find in the oven that can be burned?

Winter hasn’t even started yet and there are already first reports that people in Poland are increasingly beginning to heat their homes with combustible waste. Not only in the rural areas, but also in the cities, many houses still have stoves that can be fueled with wood or coal. But if this becomes too expensive, combustible waste such as packaging, cardboard and paper is also burned.

As Bloomberg quotes a resident of the Polish capital Warsaw, this now seems to be becoming a sad part of everyday life. “It’s so bad at this time of year that you can smell burned garbage every day, which is completely new. You rarely smell normal fuel. It’s scary when you think about what will happen when it gets really cold,” Paulina Mroczkowska told the US media portal. A mayor told Polish media that garbage collectors actually collect significantly less waste. Combustible materials are apparently outright hoarded by the citizens.

People in Poland Are Burning Trash to Stay Warm This Winter

In Poland, some households are hoarding garbage to replace their coal.

This development has raised the question of how long it will be before people scour the forests and perhaps even the landfills to find enough fuel before a thick blanket of snow blankets the country. And one can ask oneself even more whether such a development will soon have to be expected in Germany, Austria and other European countries, because people simply can no longer afford the high prices for gas, coal, pellets or regular firewood.

According to the report, the authorities in Poland have already significantly relaxed environmental regulations. It can be assumed that other countries will follow this example and thus enable people to save at least some money and not have to constantly freeze. Is “burning garbage to thwart Putin” the new winter motto? What do Greta’s disciples say about that?

Afterword from the translator:

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From a Corona Dictatorship to a Heating Dictatorship

It seems that not only will Europeans be shivering in the coming winter, they will also be slapped with fines by the state if they fail to shiver sufficiently.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from Report24:

Is Europe slipping into a heating dictatorship? Italy is also planning horrendous penalties for “energy sinners”

After Switzerland, where there is even a threat of imprisonment, “energy wasters” now also have to face penalties in Italy — the government is planning fines of up to 3,000 euros. Is Europe heading for a heating dictatorship? How long will it be before other countries like Germany and Austria follow suit?

Cozy, warm apartments could soon be a thing of the past in Italy, too. According to a report in the daily newspaper Il Messaggero, the Italian government is planning rigorous heating rules: the heating season is to start two weeks later, possibly not until November. In addition, one hour less per day will be allowed for heating, and a maximum temperature of 19°C (66°F) will apply. These measures should save up to six billion cubic meters of gas per year.

In Rome, such regulations have been a reality since March, apartments and public buildings there may only be heated up to a maximum of 18°C (64°F). The same may soon apply to all of Italy, and a draft of the exact rules is to be submitted to the EU Commission by October 15.

Random checks and monitoring of the national distribution network are intended to ensure that the orders are enforced. In apartment buildings, administrators should keep the temperatures of the radiators low. However, it is still unclear who should check the apartments and houses of Italians for heating sins; this task may be transferred to the municipalities. But there may also be nice neighbours with a block warden mentality who are happy to take over the controls…

According to the Italian media, disregarding the requirements may lead to drastic fines: Failure to comply with the heating rules could be punished with a fine of between €516 and €2582, according to a law from 2001 that is still current. Failure to properly maintain a heating system could even result in a fine of up to €3,000, according to a 2005 EU law on energy-efficient buildings. Overall, the Italians get off lightly with these penalties. In Switzerland, heating offenders who intentionally exceed the maximum heating temperature face a prison sentence of up to three years.

The energy crisis, which was brought about by Western Governments themselves, is now once again opening the door to new restrictions and patronizing of the population. It should only be a matter of time before other countries introduce such heating rules. Especially in Germany and Austria, with the Greens participating in government, who have already attracted attention with particularly draconian Corona measures, it will probably not be long. This party takes every opportunity to impose bans, especially when it comes to “saving the climate”. Therefore, these completely exaggerated heating rules can be seen as a further step towards a climate dictatorship: the Corona measures were obviously only the overture.

Afterword from the translator:

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Swedes Prepare to Shiver

The Swedish government is advising its citizens to prepare to wear outdoor clothing indoors and take fewer showers next winter, because the evil Vladimir Putin has driven up the price of electricity.

Many thanks to LN for translating this article from Samhällsnytt:

Expensive winter for householders — may face an additional SEK 50,000 in electricity bills

The popularly dubbed “sosse [socialist] prices” on electricity — or “Putin prices”, according to the Socialist government — may hit homeowners’ finances brutally this winter. You should prepare for a full 50,000 kronor [$5,000] increase in your electric bill for the cold months, experts warn.

It is already clear that the month of July, despite the heat, was the most expensive ever for electricity consumers. But that’s nothing compared to what lies in store for this winter when the cold hits. Homeowners who can’t put aside an extra SEK 50,000 to pay electric companies can expect to freeze this winter, have their electricity switched off and end up in court for unpaid electricity bills.

Red-Green energy policy decisions hit hard

The premature closure of nuclear power plants, the large-scale investment in unreliable and inadequate wind power, the interconnection of the Swedish electricity grid with other countries and the introduction of enormously power-hungry IT giants that receive electricity almost free of charge have put Sweden in a serious state of crisis when it comes to the electricity supply.

Warnings have been issued that households and businesses in Sweden may have their electricity cut off at times, something previously associated only with developing countries. Electric prices have also periodically soared to levels that have wrecked the economies of many households and driven companies out of business. However, experts are now warning that prices could be even higher this winter.

No contingency if Putin cuts gas supply

Christian Holtz, an analyst at the energy consultancy Merlin & Metis, tells Dagens Industri that Swedish homeowners should expect a surcharge of SEK 50,000 on top of what they normally pay for electricity this winter, citing Putin’s announcement of a cutoff in gas supplies to the EU as a direct cause.

For Sweden, however, it is about the lack of redundancy in the electricity supply that the red-green and red governments in particular have created through an aggressive premature closure of fully functioning nuclear power plants and a totally inadequate attempt to cover the loss of electricity production with wind turbines. If the now-vanished spare capacity had been left in the system, Sweden would have been prepared for Russian sanctions today.

The situation is further aggravated by the fact that Sweden is affected by other countries’ ill-considered energy policy decisions. This is particularly true for Germany, where the [Swedish] Green Party’s counterpart, the Greens, has been even more successful than Sweden in shutting down nuclear power. The fact that the Swedish electricity market is now linked to Europe’s means that we in Sweden cannot protect our domestic electricity needs and are being dragged into the German electricity crisis, for example.

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Stormy Weather

Yesterday was the third anniversary of my wife Dymphna’s death, and the future Baron came to visit for the occasion. I didn’t expect our activities to interfere with my normal workday, and they didn’t. Instead, Murphy intervened again and shut me down for about eighteen hours.

In the middle of the afternoon, while the fB and I were cutting flowers to take down to the grave, the wind freshened and an ominous rumbling could be heard in the west as the sky darkened. By the time we got into the car the rain was already spattering down. As we drove to the churchyard, the full violence of the storm hit, with heavy rain and gusts of wind ripping branches off the trees and throwing them into the road. We sat in the car in the parking area by the cemetery and waited to see if the rain would abate. It didn’t last very long, and when it was down to a sprinkle we got out and put the flowers in the big mason jar that I keep by Dymphna’s headstone for that purpose. We said a brief prayer and then left, intending to go out for an early dinner.

I noticed that the electricity was out in the little country store near the church, so I diverted to go back home and power down the computers (which are on separate UPS systems) in an orderly fashion. However, back at Schloss Bodissey the electricity was still on. We returned to our original plan and went out for dinner. Non-halal Indian food — curried goat for the fB, lamb bhuna for me, very tasty.

By the time we returned home the weather had cleared completely, and it was cool and pleasant as dozens of fireflies rose from the wet grass all over the yard. The electricity had never gone out, but even modest storms strain the phone company’s decrepit systems, and the Internet was down. It stayed down for the rest of the evening, so the future Baron and I entertained ourselves by watching Firefly episodes on DVD while drinking a bottle of wine. I also prepared several posts to put up when the Internet came back on, but it stayed down until I went to bed. When I woke up this morning it was back on.

That’s why there was no news feed last night. I’ll collect all the items that were sent in and include them a large news feed tonight. And I’ll be putting up those other posts in due course.

Requiem for a Sarvisberry Tree

This post is off-topic. Readers who want to stick to current political trends may safely skip it.

I needed a break from all the horrible topics I have to deal with every day, so I decided to write about something that is important to me, and is only mildly melancholic.

It snowed here at Schloss Bodissey today, the sort of late-winter wet snow that is not worrying because it doesn’t stick to the roads and won’t hang around for very long.

Looking out the back door this morning reminded me of our redcurrant tree, which would normally bloom in a couple of weeks’ time. It won’t be blooming this year, however, because there is no more redcurrant tree, thanks to the blizzard of January 3.

The photo at the top of this post shows the redcurrant tree at its best, blooming in late March of 2007. But “redcurrant” isn’t even its proper name. Dymphna and I called it that for twenty-five or thirty years, because that’s how our neighbor, an old black woman, identified it. Like all poor country black people, she was an expert on anything that grew naturally and could be eaten. She told us that the fruit ripened in June, and could be made into pie or other desserts. She would come over here during the season, and she and Dymphna would pick all the berries they could get. Dymphna would make summer pudding with them, combined with other berries in season.

But it was never a redcurrant tree. Many years later we learned that it was a juneberry, which is what the local nurseries call the tame varieties they sell. It’s also known as a sarvisberry, shadbush, or saskatoon tree.

“Sarvisberry” is my favorite. In the Appalachian Highlands of Virginia, the folk etymology for the word is that the tree got its name because it blooms just after the ground thaws in the early spring, which is when graves can be dug and all the people who died during the winter get a burial service. “Sarvis” is an archaic dialect version of the word “service”, so the association makes sense. However, the word was actually brought to the New World from Europe, where “service tree” can be traced all the way back to the Latin word sorbus, or rowan.

But I prefer the highlanders’ explanation. Besides, the assimilation of words to more familiar terms is a very common process in the English language, so it’s quite possible that those early settlers gave the local tree that name for precisely that reason.

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When I first moved here in 1978, the redcurrant tree was about half the size of what it attained before it met its demise. It was all bent over, as if it had a great weight leaning on it. I found out later why that was when I watched Dymphna and our neighbor pick the fruit: they would pull the lowest branches down so they could more easily pluck the berries from them. After years of such treatment, the tree just bent in that direction, as if offering its fruit to those who came to pick it.

Over the decades the most bent-over branch would eventually die off, and a new, vigorous sprout would appear further back, growing into a second trunk, which would also become bent in turn as its fruit was harvested. I think we saw the process repeated two or three times during the life of the tree. Eventually it got ahead of the fruit-pickers, and the highest berries could not be reached from the ground. In later years Dymphna would send me up the tree with the extension ladder to pick the fruit for her.

It often happened that the tree would fill up with cedar waxwings during berry season: the juneberries are apparently one of their favorite delicacies. Suddenly one morning the tree would be alive with dozens of them, hopping around among the branches to get every possible berry. I never saw them at any other time, just during juneberry season. Dymphna, of course, used to curse at them when they arrived.

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On the morning of January 3, 2022, a major blizzard struck Central Virginia. More than ten inches of wet snow came down in a very short period of time, dropping trees and knocking out the power.

Right after the electricity went out, I thought I ought to take a photo of the storm. I didn’t want to actually venture out into the mess, so I just opened the back storm door, stuck the camera out, and took a picture. I didn’t realize until much later that I had just taken the last photo of the redcurrant while it was still standing:

Three hours later the storm had ended and the sun came out. I went out the front door to assess the situation, and then walked around back, where I was astonished to see the following sight:

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Murphy Rears His Ugly Head Again

Early yesterday morning my phone and internet service went out without warning. It was a beautiful day, clear blue sky, no wind, so naturally the phone went out. The phone company giveth, and the phone company taketh away.

That’s why I’ve been AWOL for the last 36 hours or so. It’s going to take me a while to catch up — you wouldn’t believe how much email accumulates when I lose the internet for a day or more. There will be a news feed tonight (combining yesterday’s material with today’s), but there may not be much else. Patience is advised.