Tuesday, 27 January 2015

Some Observations on Today

First a reference to yesterday’s blog, it appears that the forecasters got it wrong, the snowfall on the North East of the US was not as bad as was anticipated. I think that is all relative though. The amount of snow was still several inches not the snowmaggedon that was anticipated. Of course with the benefit of hindsight the politicians and administrators are all being criticised for too quickly closing roads, public transportation and schools. This gives in to human natures need to blame somebody and a failure to realise that some things are not absolutely predictable. I believe that some of the world’s most powerful computer systems are used to predict and track weather systems. This because there are so many variables all of which interact, and this is for weather forecasters who are trying to predict snowfalls in individual locations. As for the precipitate closures, this is a case where if politicians get it wrong there is chaos and worse still deaths. I would rather that there is caution here rather than a gung-ho attitude.

When there are cold weather warnings they always say to watch out for the elderly. While that is certainly true in respect of making sure that the elderly stay warm, but actually the people more at risk in cold weather are the fit and healthy, the reason is that they are more likely to go outside and have accidents, and therefore are more likely to have to attend hospital emergency centres. Well as they say you learn something every day, my daughter-in-law may tell me otherwise.

Ok enough of looking back; I must give praise to Scarborough Hospital. I was due a CT scan, yesterday the hospital rang to ask me if I would change my appointment bringing it forward a couple of days. It was not a problem though I had a little bit of a tight schedule, so it was great that I was seen promptly on time, and it took almost exactly the time that was predicted. Excellent service, all I now have to hope is that those pesky kidney stones have disappeared.


We had to go to York today, and we returned via the rural roads. For those of you who are familiar with the landscape paintings of David Hockney, this is the countryside that he paints so beautifully. The light captured the steel grey of rural North Yorkshire perfectly. It was not a classic beauty but a type of presence that imprinted the landscape on my memory. The dull green of the winter crops, the starkness of the bare trees, the great vistas. It is simply beautiful and redolent of this part of the world. A question for my readers, I observed a crop that at first sight looked like wheat, however it could not be at this time of the year. It looked like a straw type crop, slightly taller than wheat. I wondered if it was some sort of biomass crop to be burnt in power stations. Any suggestions gratefully received.

3 comments:

  1. Here is another take on weather, Nigel. I am not one to generally be interested in the weather, aside from how it might affect my driving or recreation plans. However, yesterday I came across two questions which I thought were interesting. One: what was it like to be in a real blizzard? In 1970s rural Vermont, we had storms frequently. Always the power went out (Vermont rural infrastructure lagged the nation by about twenty years), but we had the wood stove for heat and cooking, candles and oil lamp for light. We melted snow for water and used the brackish water from an old well in the basement for flushing. In one word, though, it was restful. Cut off from the cares of the world, it was a respite, a time to slow down, read, talk and take care of the necessities. Today, we still have the wood stove but have to go to the lake for water, assuming it is not frozen over! Thankfully, the power goes out less now. Still, it feels like a vacation, as we are fortunate to be able to fend for ourselves. The second question: metaphorically speaking, what has it been like to experience a blizzard in your life? I haven't finished noodling that one, but interestingly, restful and respite are not the first words that come to mind. Maybe the weather has more to teach me than I thnk...!

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  2. Karin, you comments about rural Vermont are interesting and put into perspective our current obsession with instance response. Only yesterday I was reading of the disaster that was an outage for one hour at Facebook. How would people cope with life in where they were left to their own devices. It might be be beneficial to stop and think for a while.

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  3. I hope I'm not old yet (!) but I do worry that technology has interfered with just that, the space to stop and think, especially for young people. Of course technology encourages a lot of thinking too - like that sparked by your blog! - but a regular sitting with silence in nature might be good thing too.

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