Category Archives: cold

On the common cold

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There are more than a hundred different rhino viruses that come under the heading of the common cold, so unless you’ve had all one hundred plus, you are always in danger of catching a cold someplace–the super market, church, school, work, the mall, the airport, wherever people gather. The cold is the perfect disease because it doesn’t kill it’s host, it only makes the host feel bad for a few days, and then it goes away. You get a runny nose, some fever, a sore throat, a few body aches, a nagging cough, but you are never in danger of dying, even when you feel like the contrary may be true. Sometimes a cold will make you feel absolutely crappy, especially at night when you want to sleep. Either the coughing keeps you awake, or the sneezing makes your ribs hurt, or you can’t blow your nose one more time or it will bleed. I think that high dosis of Vick’s work wonders, but I have no proof of that–I just think it’s right. You cough until you are blue in the face and just can’t cough anymore. You cough up nightmarish stuff that could gag a horse. If you take medicine, the cold lasts about fourteen days, and if you don’t take anything, it lasts about two weeks. Oh, people have their home remedies–vitamine C, zinc, chicken soup, hooch–of those only the hooch will make you feel better (for obvious reasons). The thing with the cold is this: you really don’t feel bad enough to stay put and stay home, which would kill the cold. No, you go out, spreading the cold from here to kingdom come, and the cold virus has a whole new world to infect. That’s why the cold is the perfect disease.

On the common cold

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There are more than a hundred different rhino viruses that come under the heading of the common cold, so unless you’ve had all one hundred plus, you are always in danger of catching a cold someplace–the super market, church, school, work, the mall, the airport, wherever people gather. The cold is the perfect disease because it doesn’t kill it’s host, it only makes the host feel bad for a few days, and then it goes away. You get a runny nose, some fever, a sore throat, a few body aches, a nagging cough, but you are never in danger of dying, even when you feel like the contrary may be true. Sometimes a cold will make you feel absolutely crappy, especially at night when you want to sleep. Either the coughing keeps you awake, or the sneezing makes your ribs hurt, or you can’t blow your nose one more time or it will bleed. I think that high dosis of Vick’s work wonders, but I have no proof of that–I just think it’s right. You cough until you are blue in the face and just can’t cough anymore. You cough up nightmarish stuff that could gag a horse. If you take medicine, the cold lasts about fourteen days, and if you don’t take anything, it lasts about two weeks. Oh, people have their home remedies–vitamine C, zinc, chicken soup, hooch–of those only the hooch will make you feel better (for obvious reasons). The thing with the cold is this: you really don’t feel bad enough to stay put and stay home, which would kill the cold. No, you go out, spreading the cold from here to kingdom come, and the cold virus has a whole new world to infect. That’s why the cold is the perfect disease.

On snow drifts

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Snow drifts are silent frozen sentinels that stand guard at the gates of winter. Mother Nature, and her helper, the North Wind, work tirelessly throughout winter to sculpt these waves, frozen in time and space until the sun comes out in March. Drifts clog driveways, block up doors and windows, and turn short cuts into dead-ends. Built out of the fluid dynamics of blowing snow, drifts grow in the wake of falling snow, a function of wind and the obstacles the wind and snow encounter. Most of the time you can stand back and just admire the strange fractal art of these strange white waves that don’t move, but a big drift is also a brick wall that must be dismantled if the sidewalk is to be cleared or the driveway made passable. Drifts are made of packed snow which is a whole other animal and bears little resemblance to the white fluffy stuff that gently falls in the woods at the end of the day. Snow drifts are both elegant and beautiful, and at the same time, they are deadly and malevolent. You can’t break through with your car without hurting yourself and hanging up your vehicle. Snow drifts are silent car traps that can hang up the sturdiest four-wheel-drive and leave it with its wheels spinning. The snow is as tough as steel and as delicate as lace. And when the sun comes out, it begins to shrink like the Wicked Witch of the West. Drifts are ephemeral, three-dimensional, chaotic, unpredictable. Drifts are what remind us that we are not in control–never were in the first place.

On snow drifts

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Snow drifts are silent frozen sentinels that stand guard at the gates of winter. Mother Nature, and her helper, the North Wind, work tirelessly throughout winter to sculpt these waves, frozen in time and space until the sun comes out in March. Drifts clog driveways, block up doors and windows, and turn short cuts into dead-ends. Built out of the fluid dynamics of blowing snow, drifts grow in the wake of falling snow, a function of wind and the obstacles the wind and snow encounter. Most of the time you can stand back and just admire the strange fractal art of these strange white waves that don’t move, but a big drift is also a brick wall that must be dismantled if the sidewalk is to be cleared or the driveway made passable. Drifts are made of packed snow which is a whole other animal and bears little resemblance to the white fluffy stuff that gently falls in the woods at the end of the day. Snow drifts are both elegant and beautiful, and at the same time, they are deadly and malevolent. You can’t break through with your car without hurting yourself and hanging up your vehicle. Snow drifts are silent car traps that can hang up the sturdiest four-wheel-drive and leave it with its wheels spinning. The snow is as tough as steel and as delicate as lace. And when the sun comes out, it begins to shrink like the Wicked Witch of the West. Drifts are ephemeral, three-dimensional, chaotic, unpredictable. Drifts are what remind us that we are not in control–never were in the first place.

On falling down in Chicago

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So, Friday night in downtown Chicago, on Michigan Avenue, I slipped and fell in a puddle of ice water. Now before you all make lots of jokes about how clumsy I am, imagine first the scene and circumstances: it was dark, raining, the temp was around freezing, there was a ton of traffic, and the city of Chicago had not cleaned up its corners. It was hazardous. I slipped on an invisible piece of ice that was camouflaged by bad lighting and lots of water. The good thing was that I did not stick out my hands to break my fall, that bad thing is my left elbow took a beating. My butt landed in a pool of icy water that broke my fall. It all happened in the blink of an eye, and all of sudden I was sodden and soaked and looking up into the Chicago night sky. I suspected I was hurt, but I popped up immediately, much to the horror of those standing over me. After a quick assessment of my graceless return to earth, I realized that although my elbow was really unhappy, the rest of me, though cold and soaked, was probably okay because my derriere gracelessly landed squarely in a puddle of ice water which had curiously reduced and deflected and absorbed the force of the fall. Though my pride was damaged and wet and cold, I decided to continue on to dinner. At the restaurant, they gave me a bag of ice for my elbow along with my risotto. I continue to recuperate. My elbow is bruised but healing, my soaked clothing has been dried, and my pride, well, I decided to leave a bit of that on Michigan Avenue.

On January

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The first month of the year is also the coldest month of the year in the northern hemisphere. This is even more true as a frigid arctic vortex spirals out of northern Canada and crawls into the midwest with unbelievably cold temperatures. Between the mean-spirited arctic wind, the cruel sub-zero temperatures, and the relentlessly ironic snow, a person might make plans to move to Arizona sometime in the very near future, if not yesterday. Living in the middle of a January winter is a challenge, but is it a challenge everyone wants to face? Since I now live in Texas, I don’t have to deal with winter. Perhaps it will be a little chilly tonight, but what’s one night compared to ninety nights of cold, black ice? I totally understand neighbors here in Texas who have vowed to never live in ice and snow again–they hate it. Yet, there is beauty in winter, and I know many people who just laugh in the face of sub-zero temperatures and endless drifts of snow as trivial circumstances that defeat only the weakest of minds. Are they sturdy or foolhardy? I couldn’t say, but I see the beauty in having four seasons–you really learn to appreciate the warm sun in spring, and frosty nights of October. Change is good, invigorating, makes you feel alive. I see January as just another challenge, no better or worse than 105F in the shade in central Texas in August.

On January

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The first month of the year is also the coldest month of the year in the northern hemisphere. This is even more true as a frigid arctic vortex spirals out of northern Canada and crawls into the midwest with unbelievably cold temperatures. Between the mean-spirited arctic wind, the cruel sub-zero temperatures, and the relentlessly ironic snow, a person might make plans to move to Arizona sometime in the very near future, if not yesterday. Living in the middle of a January winter is a challenge, but is it a challenge everyone wants to face? Since I now live in Texas, I don’t have to deal with winter. Perhaps it will be a little chilly tonight, but what’s one night compared to ninety nights of cold, black ice? I totally understand neighbors here in Texas who have vowed to never live in ice and snow again–they hate it. Yet, there is beauty in winter, and I know many people who just laugh in the face of sub-zero temperatures and endless drifts of snow as trivial circumstances that defeat only the weakest of minds. Are they sturdy or foolhardy? I couldn’t say, but I see the beauty in having four seasons–you really learn to appreciate the warm sun in spring, and frosty nights of October. Change is good, invigorating, makes you feel alive. I see January as just another challenge, no better or worse than 105F in the shade in central Texas in August.

On snow flakes

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The engineering and architecture of the snow flake is really a very simple hexagonal lattice which forms regular symmetrical hexagonal prisms. Your car, however, will slip and slide the same whether you know that or not. Every winter I am fascinated by snow and our relationship to it. Where I live in central Texas, it rarely snows at all. The fresh white blanket of a recent snowfall, however, adds incredible beauty to the frozen and desolate landscape of winter. Winter in the Northland is a devastating and painful experience of cold and ice, temperatures so low you have to put a “minus” sign in front of the number. Yet when it warms up to just below freezing, it snows and we have to plow or shovel or go sliding into the ditch–love, hate snow flakes, you might say. Watching falling snow has such a calming effect on me that I can nap at the drop of hat during a fresh snow–I have a Youtube channel on my computer which only shows falling snow. Yet it is slippery, and on more than one occasion I have performed awkward ballet moves on my way down to the ground, proving once and for all that gravity is real and that I am mere flesh and blood that may be broken. My one and only spinout in a car occurred while driving in fresh snow. Snow flakes are of the most delicate combinations of frozen ice crystals, microscopic, really, but they have the power to wreak to havoc on the populations where they fall, clogging up streets and highways, slicking up sidewalks and driveways, making life just a little more dangerous than it already is. So one would have to say that snow is both a blessing and curse, but for the moment, I prefer to see it as a blessing.

On snow flakes

Posted on by

The engineering and architecture of the snow flake is really a very simple hexagonal lattice which forms regular symmetrical hexagonal prisms. Your car, however, will slip and slide the same whether you know that or not. Every winter I am fascinated by snow and our relationship to it. Where I live in central Texas, it rarely snows at all. The fresh white blanket of a recent snowfall, however, adds incredible beauty to the frozen and desolate landscape of winter. Winter in the Northland is a devastating and painful experience of cold and ice, temperatures so low you have to put a “minus” sign in front of the number. Yet when it warms up to just below freezing, it snows and we have to plow or shovel or go sliding into the ditch–love, hate snow flakes, you might say. Watching falling snow has such a calming effect on me that I can nap at the drop of hat during a fresh snow–I have a Youtube channel on my computer which only shows falling snow. Yet it is slippery, and on more than one occasion I have performed awkward ballet moves on my way down to the ground, proving once and for all that gravity is real and that I am mere flesh and blood that may be broken. My one and only spinout in a car occurred while driving in fresh snow. Snow flakes are of the most delicate combinations of frozen ice crystals, microscopic, really, but they have the power to wreak to havoc on the populations where they fall, clogging up streets and highways, slicking up sidewalks and driveways, making life just a little more dangerous than it already is. So one would have to say that snow is both a blessing and curse, but for the moment, I prefer to see it as a blessing.