life in a word – Page 6 – Life In A Word

waning

I remember well when I was a kid, those sleight-of-hand magic tricks that were always accompanied by the words “now you see it, now you don’t”. Even up close my eyes would deceive me as the silver dollar was in the hand, and then suddenly it wasn’t.

Now that I’m a few years past the half-century mark I have a better application for “now you see it, now you don’t”. Eyesight. Sure, a lot of things go south as you get older, but with the eyes you just don’t see it coming. Before you know it you’re a regular squinter. No more 20/20 for you. Your vision is waning.

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In all fairness I never had perfect vision to begin with. I was born with a lazy eye and wore glasses from an early age. I sported a pirate patch for a couple of years to force the lazy eye to work harder – didn’t get me any girlfriends. When I switched to soft contacts in high school it was like I’d buried the secret of my imperfect vision forever.

Fast-forward another thirty years. During a routine visit to the eye doctor the question was posed, “do you wear reading glasses?” I remember kind of puffing up my chest as I said, “no, I do not wear reading glasses”. At that, the doc glided back in his chair, grinned at me and said, “well, you will soon”. And I’ll be damned if he wasn’t right. Within a year I was shopping for readers at my local drug store.

Keeping things in focus has evolved to a constant adventure. When I first bought reading glasses I kept them in that place where you think they’ll be whenever you need them. Wrong. Very quickly I discovered it made more sense to buy a half-dozen readers and just leave them all over the place. I put a pair in the car, one by the bed, another in the bathroom, a fourth in the home office, and a fifth in the family room. That fifth pair even travels to the kitchen and laundry room every now and then.

Speaking of the laundry room, reading glasses have become an essential for clothing labels. I can find the label all right but I better have my readers and some bright light if I expect to read the label. Trust me; f you’re not in focus your brain can convince you that “let hang dry” actually reads “tumble dry low”, and the next thing you know your wife’s sweater goes to charity as a gift for a small child.

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In my home office I’ve graduated to two pairs of reading glasses, because my waning eyesight decided I needed the 1.0 prescription for the computer monitor and the 2.0 for the printed word. So that’s me in the office, flip-flopping readers every time I glance from the computer to the page. Please find me some bi-focal reading glasses.

Here’s a genius idea for modern times: flat, bendable readers for your smartphone. They live in a little pocket that sticks to the back of your phone, just waiting to come out to help you see all those tiny pixels. They don’t have the side supports that go back to the ears, but just pinch/perch on your nose. I snapped up a pair at Target the moment I found them. Sure they look funny but so does squinting to read text messages.

I just moved into a pair of bifocals. Doc said dry, aging eyes will eventually reject my contact lenses, so I’m trying the two-for-one approach. Above the line gets you driving eyes; below the line gets you reading eyes. For your sake I hope I never put them on upside down.

aggrandize

On a recent trip to Sweden, my wife and I went to an “ice bar” in one of Stockholm’s downtown hotels. The experience is unique and exactly as advertised. You enter a small lobby adjacent to the hotel, where payment gets you admission and a drink. Then you don parka and gloves and pass through double-doors into the bar itself. The temperature immediately plummets to well below freezing, and everything – I mean everything – is made of ice.

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The photo above is the ice bar itself, where drinks are prepared and served. If you look closely you can see the “glasses” lined up along the back – really just big cubes of ice hollowed out to hold the alcohol. Once you have your drink you’re encouraged to seat yourself at one of the nearby booths. Your table and chair are made of ice. Several free-standing ice walls define the space. The lighting changes slowly – different colors and levels of brightness – to accentuate the nature scenes and cityscapes expertly carved into the walls. The entire facility is melted and reconstructed twice a year.

As I think back on our ice bar experience I realize this is an example of reinventing a rather ordinary activity. Take away the ice and all we’re doing is having a drink in a bar. The genius of the ice bar is that its inventor realized people would pay good money for the novelty. This, my friends, is how you aggrandize an everyday activity.

If you’ve heard of ice bars you’ve probably heard of oxygen bars too. Another clever soul realized people would pay good money ($1/minute!) to consume flavored varieties of oxygen. Throw in the purported health benefits and the customers came a-flocking. I won’t cave into an oxygen bar anytime soon but I might pay good money to see the patrons themselves – fitted with an apparatus that goes around the ears and up into the nostrils – breathing what is obviously available for free in the atmosphere around them.

Los Angeles boasts a gourmet water bar, which includes a 46-page menu of bottled waters; some as much as $20/bottle. And for $50 you can take a water-tasting class. The venture has been described as a “rousing financial success”, expanding recently with two more locations. Consider that California – drought-stricken as this generation has ever experienced – boasts a thriving pay-for water business. I admit I’ve had my share of bottled water, but I’ll sooner pay $25 for my ice bar drink than $20 for my water bar water.

We are a generation that aggrandizes; infusing new life into run-of-the-mill doings. Movies have evolved from silent to “talkies”, from black-and-white to color, from two dimensions to three, and from sound to “surround”. Bowling and miniature golf offer glow-in-the-dark versions. Ski and snowboard at night under the lights.

Just before our trip to Sweden we also visited Denmark, home of the famous author Hans Christian Andersen. If you know Andersen’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, it’s a fitting fairy tale for the subject at hand. The emperor wants a stunning new outfit for the royal parade, so his clever tailors convince him to spend a couple of trunks of gold coins on invisible clothes – so stunning they are “like nothing he’s ever seen”. Thus the emperor parades in his underwear while the tailors escape with a small fortune. Money for nothing.

Maybe we need to reconsider how we spend our hard-earned dollars on things like ice bars and oxygen and movies. Aggrandize all you want, but in the end isn’t it really just about the drink?

naive

Someone once described me as “wet behind the ears”. At the time I didn’t realize I was being called naive. I thought it really was about the water. You know, do a better job toweling off after the shower. Use the hair dryer longer.

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Now that I’m older and supposedly wiser, I still believe it’s about the water. For an opening argument consider my astrological sign. I’m an Aquarius – the so-called water-bearer. Aquarians are more nobly representative of “the Gods nourishing the earth with life-giving energies”. Not from my experience. We January/February birthdays are all about the wet stuff.

I should have seen this coming, really. Twenty-eight years ago, in the San Francisco B&B where my wife and I spent our wedding night, we awoke the following morning to a steady drip onto the middle of our bed from the ceiling above. What a fitting prelude to the years that followed.

The ball really got rolling (correction: the river really started running) with the handful of houses we’ve purchased over the years. Our first place – a townhouse – was built on landfill. That landfill began sinking years before we bought the place. There weren’t water problems to speak of, but the bulk of our monthly homeowner’s dues paid for fixes to the leaking underground plumbing (not to mention the lawsuit that came with it).

Our second house – a modest old lady from the 1940’s – endured the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. There wasn’t much damage, except the water heater fell over in the garage, and for awhile we had a nice little stream from our driveway to the street.

It gets better. In fact, our third house was the piece de resistance of our liquid adventures. This place was somehow built without a french drain; essential for transporting water away from the building foundation. In the spring of that first year therefore, the melting snow turned our basement into a scene from Titanic. You’ve heard the term “floating ceiling”? This was “floating floor”; carpet, furniture, and all.

The house we live in now – on several acres of land – includes a retention pond that is part of a network of neighborhood creeks and reservoirs designed to move water safely through the region. But we had no idea the previous owners dug out our pond much deeper than its engineered specs. So the first really good spring rain not only overflowed the pond, but broke the dam to the creek that moved through downstream properties. The result: a custom-made flash flood. Our neighbors received so much surface water they should have gone into the rice paddy business.

In my research on astrological signs, I came across the website beliefnet.com, which hosts a ten-question quiz to determine which element – air, earth, fire water – best describes a person. On a 0-100 scale, a “water person” is between 21 and 50. Does it surprise you my answers rated me a 41? Then again, I’m not sure how much credence I can give to a quiz where “water people” are described as “go with the flow”, “bubbly”, “enjoy meditation especially in steam baths”, have eyes that are “deep and liquid”, are “prone to tears”, are “inconsistent as the tides”, and possess a wonderful sensitivity that can “go overboard”. Somewhere the water gods are laughing at me.

You think I’d learn. Every summer we spend our vacations at the seashore. Last month we took a cruise. Most hours of the day my companion is a glass of water. For heaven’s sake, do you SEE the banner photo I chose for my blog? It’s as if I’m taunting those gods of Aquarius. But I think this is more of a fate thing. And I’m not naive about this anymore either. I’ll bet you a case of Dasani it won’t be long before something new rains on my parade.

wistful

The church we belong to has an interesting element in its design; something I have not seen since my childhood. It’s called a “cry room”. A cry room is a small, enclosed, soundproofed space adjacent to a more public space – like a church sanctuary – with a few chairs (or pews) behind a large pane of glass. Parents can take their unhappy infants into the cry room and still see and hear the church service without disturbing the congregation. Parents can enter from the sanctuary or they can enter from the church foyer; in fact, you hardly notice them.

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Our pastor enjoys telling new visitors the cry room is actually for adults as well – the ones who are upset with what he has to say in his sermons.

I was first introduced to cry rooms at a movie theater of my youth. It was a small seaside venue with only one or two screens. The cry room was situated at the back of the theater, soundproofed and elevated. They put a few theater-style seats behind the glass, with speakers so you could still hear the movie. As a teenager, my friends and I thought the cry room was the cool place to watch the movie from, as if we had our very own private theater. In hindsight, it would have been a great place for a first date.

Cry rooms are clearly a throwback to times gone by, like those big velvet curtains that would pull aside before the movie began. They bring back memories of the simpler, more refined eras that I sometimes yearn for. They make me wistful. I did a little research and learned that cry rooms were always included in early theater design. The nicer ones included electric bottle warmers, complimentary formula, and often a nurse on duty. Different times, no?

A hotel in Japan takes a different spin on the concept of a cry room. They’ve set aside several rooms specifically for women to de-stress from the apparently demanding lifestyle of the Japanese culture. Check into a cry room, select from one of several Hollywood tear-jerker DVD’s, and let the tears flow and the stress melt away. They supply you with a healthy stock of tissues and a warm eye mask, so you can emerge a few hours later with no evidence on your face. Would you pay $85 for that?

The recent trend in church design is to remove the cry room from the sanctuary. I think that’s a shame, as infants are showing up in the pews in greater numbers these days. Speaking of infants, a few months ago I watched a woman video the pastor’s sermon on her iPhone with no regard for the people sitting around her. She was in the pew directly in front of me. Try concentrating on the message as you look past an iPhone held up high. Forget the wailing babies; I’ve found an even better reason to bring back cry rooms.

meticulous

I have bed-making down to an art. Tens of thousands of practices over my lifetime have developed a habit and an approach that is as efficient and perfect as they come. I am precise and thorough, with the extreme attention to detail that can only be defined as meticulous. Inside of five minutes I can boast hospital corners, fluffed pillows, and perfectly aligned tucked-in sheets and blankets with not a crease in site. It’s quite the accomplishment.

Recently – and somewhat disturbingly – I found myself making the bed in our hotel when my wife and I would travel. Even though housekeeping comes along later in the day and their very job is to make the bed, the habit is so ingrained from childhood that I simply can’t leave the room without giving the bed some semblance of an orderly look.

All of this attention to bed-making has me questioning the entire practice, so let’s just put it out there. Why do we make beds in the first place? Who really sees your bed besides you and whomever you share it with? Why make it nice and neat if you’re just going to mess it up again later the same day? Or how about this: isn’t it more sanitary to leave the sheets exposed to the fresh air instead hiding them under blankets and comforters all day long?

Maybe these questions are really just excuses born from a childhood of not wanting to make my bed.

In the classic children’s novel “The Twenty-One Balloons”, author William Pene du Bois imagined a fantastic bed-making device. The sheets formed a continuous loop that disappeared into the floor on both sides of the bed. The portions of the sheet below the floor passed through rollers into a flat washing machine and a drying press before looping back up to the bed. A crank inserted into the footboard would rotate the sheets exactly one width of the bed. Therefore, not only is the bed made all the time but you always have clean sheets. Brilliant!

Sometimes my wife and I wake up in the morning, and the bed looks like it’s still made even though we haven’t gotten up yet. In fact, if I carefully turn back the sheets and blankets as I get out of bed, it only takes a single tug to restore order. It’s the simplest form of bed-making. Is that my answer; learning to sleep lying perfectly still all night long so the bed practically makes itself?

More likely I should take a lesson from the not-so-classic film “Along Came Polly”. In a scene that absolutely resonates with me, Ben Stiller’s character would make his bed every day meticulously, topping it off with a dozen or more perfectly-placed decorative pillows. In an even better scene, Jennifer Aniston’s character – a wonderfully free spirit – launches an all-out assault on the pillows, reducing them to a storm of ripped-up cloth and flying feathers. And there’s the lesson. Let the bed go unmade every now and then. Forget about the hospital corners or the sheet aligning with the blanket or the arrangement of the pillows. It doesn’t matter. Goodness knows you have more important things to do with your day.

irk

Watch out. I’m about to ruin your theater-going experience. If you want to enjoy your movies without the nagging of my detail-oriented world, do not read any further. You have been warned.

I am one of those who can’t help but notice the little things. When I enter a theater I am immediately aware of my surroundings. How big is the screen? How comfortable are the chairs? Is the sound too loud or just right? Did I get freshly-made popcorn or the slightly stale stuff from the bottom of the bin? Yet these are minor distractions when I consider my recent experiences at the movies. Drum roll please; I give you the twelve items that irk me most when I’m at the theater. No matter how intense the action scene or how enrapturing the love scene, one or more of these dozen offenses are sure to get up in my face and say “hello”:

1) The sounds of snacks. At the movies I demand the silence that Simon & Garfunkel made famous (get it?) but instead I’m surrounded by crunches, slurps, wrappers, pours, gulps, and chews. Is this a vote for early-onset hearing loss?

2) Cell phones. To the credit of my fellow movie-goers, I can’t recall the last time I heard a cell phone bleep during a movie. But they still buzz. And they light up. And I notice. My peripheral vision gets high marks at the eye doctor but makes me pay dearly at the movies.

3) Ushers with flashlights. Here’s a new one. Ushers pass through the theater once during the movie to check things out. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a good idea with some of the crazies out there. But I see them. I know why they’re there. And my movie gets a “time-out” until they leave.

4) People movement. This one is trending upward. Why are people going in and out of the theater during the movie? Did they not take care of business earlier? Are there lottery winnings distributed in the lobby that I’m not aware of? And what about missing those couple of minutes while you’re gone? Don’t you want your money’s worth? Sit still people!

5) Commercials. I include movie previews in the value of my ticket purchase. But not commercials. Nor previews that are really just commercials in disguise. Nor ads for television shows. Not what I came for.

6) Seat kicks. Which begs the question, are they intentional or is the person behind you overly-aggressive with their response to a given scene? No matter; you never see them coming and once you get one you’re on edge wondering when number two will hit.

7) The louder movie next door. Beware the lure of a soft romance or poignant drama. Hollywood has produced an action-packed blockbuster that just happens to be playing in the adjacent theater. There are no words to describe the moment when a bomb goes off in the middle of a love scene.

8) Ticket/concession costs. Okay maybe this is just me, but it takes time to get over the fact that I just paid more for my concessions than I did for my movie ticket. I know, I know – concessions equal profit margin. But I’m already well into my movie before I can make peace with that.

9) “People” sounds. In addition to the sounds of snacks, I give you loud breathing, distinctive laughs (otherwise known as cackles, whoops, snickers, and howls), coughs, sniffles, and those other sounds better left to the imagination than described here.

10) The wrong movie. I kid you not. At a theater a few months ago our romantic comedy opened with a towering image of Will Ferrell’s face. I knew instantly they’d queued up the wrong movie. Will Ferrell and romantic comedy do not belong in the same sentence. Or movie theater.

11) The person sitting next to you. Admit it, you arrive early and choose your seats hoping no one will sit next to you. And when they do, you wonder who gets the arm rest. Or the drink holder. And what’s that funny smell?

12) Talkers. Sorry ladies, but women who go to the movies together like to talk ABOUT the movie DURING the movie for EVERYONE to hear. They also seem drawn to the seats directly behind me. One time I actually confronted them about it and promptly learned the meaning of the phrase “dagger eyes”.

So there you have it. Life used to be so simple. My gauge of a good movie was getting to the closing credits without wondering where I put my car keys. But those days are gone. The movies are officially a gamble, but only with respect to which (or how many) of the above distractions will be included. I hope you’re enlightened. I’m irked. Enjoy the show.

eccentric

Our neighbor to the north is what is politely referred to as an eccentric. He is that guy you probably see in your own neighborhood now and then: an older gent who tends to stay to himself, with a bizarre sense of fashion, and the uniquely long, wispy, wild gray hair that completes the picture of a silver-screen creeper. I can’t help but stare every time I see him ambling about.

Our eccentric is home all the time but he’s not someone for the neighborhood watch. You would know this just by looking at his property. In addition to his adobe-style house – which looks like it was helicoptered in and dropped amidst the horse properties of the area – he has several outbuildings remaining from an old ranch that once commanded hundreds of acres. Collectively the buildings made for a quaint Colorado postcard when you looked out my window. Then creeper tore them all down, leaving only a large silo and an old wooden livestock loading ramp.

In the ten years we’ve lived here, we’ve only run into Mr. Crazy a handful of times. Most of those encounters reinforced the idea that he’s missing a few marbles. On one occasion, his cows escaped his property (run cows, run for your lives!) and he called my wife demanding she get on a horse and go after them. On another occasion I called the fire department on him, because he started a huge blaze inside the silo burning God-knows-what. (Weed? I don’t remember but maybe that’s because I got high). On yet another occasion – in a doctor’s office of all places – psycho showed up minutes after we did to see the same doctor. Stalker. I was quietly hoping the doctor would check him into a round room and give him a bag of marshmallows to play with. But alas, there he was back on his property the very next day.

Our latest encounter with loony – an experience that cements our neighbor’s status as out-to-lunch – involves our mailbox. It’s an innocent-looking picture, isn’t it? Boxes sitting quietly on a modest stand waiting patiently for their daily fill from USPS. In fact, the boxes are sitting on a brand new stand in a brand new location. They used to live on a stand further to the north – on screwball’s property.

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Here’s the quick story. In mid-December, just in time to boost my holiday cheer, I received a notice from dingbat. The notice told me the stand underneath the mailboxes belonged to him, and he was taking it down because he decided to move his own mailbox to the other end of his property. So for the rest of us – my other two neighbors and I – we needed to find a new stand and relocate our mailboxes. Get er’ done in two weeks or the mailboxes would be left sitting on the ground. Unless, madman was quick to add, we’d each kick in $50. Then he’d leave the stand in place. $50? Heck, I can get a year’s worth of a P.O. box for less than that.

Anyway, I conferred with my neighbors and just for kicks we decided to… do nothing. No response to our notices and no $50. The ol’ wait and see. Well, wacko didn’t disappoint. Each of us received another notice just before New Year’s telling us “time was running out!” Well Happy New Year, old man; we still didn’t do anything.

Okay, so here’s the one part of the story where bats-in-his-belfry gets a little pat on the back (not a real one, mind you). The final notice we received – shortly after January 1 – was an official document from the USPS Postmaster telling us we had one week to relocate our boxes. Needless to say, end of story and see photo above.

One final oddity about Mr. Crazy. He hand-writes his notices in illegible #2 pencil scrawled on yellow pad. Most people would create a Word document and print it, or write a single note and then copy it. Weirdo wrote every one of his notices by hand. Who does that? What really goes on in that house over there?

If you’re concerned my lack-of-marbles neighbor will read this, I’ve probably made his day since he seems to enjoy pestering those who live nearby. I can just picture him over their behind the curtains of his out-of-place adobe, reading my blog and doing a jig while he cackles and throws Cheetos at his computer. Yeah, yeah – have your fun pal – we’re still not moving. Just don’t ask me to borrow a cup of sugar.

penchant

This week I attended a conference at my alma mater; the University of Notre Dame. The days were busy with leadership sessions, guest speakers, and networking, but there was ample time to walk the campus and experience the sights of times gone by. It is a place where pride, sentiment, and fondness combine to where I am unquestionably drawn to it. In a word, I have a penchant for Notre Dame.

What is immediately apparent about Notre Dame these days is its physical expansion. The entire campus of my undergraduate experience – now thirty years ago – is surrounded by new buildings, longer quads, and grander athletic facilities. As a whole it is breathtakingly impressive, even for those who have visited many times before. But when I cross the proverbial threshold from the new to the old; from the present to the past, to arrive in the sub-campus of my day, there comes a sense of calm and familiarity that can only come from experiences that leave a permanent imprint.

My walking tour took me past my academic and social haunts. I passed several buildings where I experienced the triumphs and tragedies of the classroom. I passed several dorms – including my own – where the memories of friends and roommates and dates and parties came back to me as if yesterday. It was easy to get wrapped up in the blanket of yesteryear.

Students were everywhere during my walk. I was delighted to see some of the same habits and activities. Frisbee on the quad. Boyfriend/girlfriend walking hand-in-hand. Dozens of undergraduates desperate for the spring sunshine relaxing in shorts and t-shirts. In that moment I wanted to be one of them again.

I captured my walk with a lot of photos. Every turn – whether for beauty or nostalgia – had me pausing and clicking. It was as if I was trying to capture the essence of my past and trap it inside of my phone. Which I realized, in hindsight, was simply not possible.

Notre Dame has some very special places. There are two lakes in the middle of campus with quiet walking paths around them. There is the Grotto – perhaps the most special of those places – where one can light a candle and say a prayer in the shadow of Notre Dame’s cathedral: the Basilica of Sacred Heart. And there are dozens of corners where you disappear behind a building or down a walkway, and suddenly realize you are alone in the peace and quiet of the moment.

I walked past one of the lakes for several minutes trying to recapture the moments and voices of my years. I sat at the Grotto trying to summon the spirits of such a significant time in my life. Even at the bookstore – where Notre Dame’s name or logo is imprinted on everything imaginable, I wandered the aisles in search of… in search of… I’m not sure what. Did I really believe I could purchase my memories in a shirt? Or a book? Or a photo?

Thirty years can change a place forever. New buildings, new students, and the personality of a new generation dissolve the images of what once was. And so, as I completed my journey down memory lane, I realized that what I sought, I already had with me. My years at Notre Dame; my experience that was like no other, rests proudly and permanently in my memories. No photograph or keepsake or paragraph will ever do it justice.

unsung

St. Patrick gets a lot of attention this time of year. His Feast Day is March 17th, when many of us claim to be Irish. We wear the green, march in the parades, run the 5k’s, and drink more than we should. Over the centuries we’ve built massive cathedrals to Patrick’s name in Dublin and New York City and a dozen other cities around the globe. But why does Patrick get all the love? Did you know there are actually three patron saints of Ireland? I’d like to talk about one of the others – my wife’s namesake Brigid. Her Feast Day is February 1st.

Three years ago Brigid and I visited Ireland for the first time. While we toured the Emerald Isle we made a point of travelling to Kildare – not far from Dublin – to see St. Brigid’s Cathedral. Kildare is delightful; the quaint Irish town of my mind’s eye. St. Brigid’s Cathedral is its focal point, just above the town square. It was constructed a long time ago but it’s still an impressive landmark. You’ll learn a lot about St. Brigid here. She had a way with animals (an absolute parallel with my wife), she was a patroness of students, and she was a female superior in the church. In a nutshell, she knew how to get what she wanted (again, a parallel).

Brigid has fifteen “wishing wells” throughout Ireland; devotional places where the water is said to be holy. The one we visited had a prayer tree full of ribbons and strips of cloth. Animals watched us from a nearby pasture.

Let’s go back to Patrick for a moment. Again, I’m not sure why he gets the spotlight. Yes he’s a “patron saint” of Ireland (along with Brigid and some guy named Columba) but more specifically? He’s the patron saint of engineers and paralegals. That’s it.

Brigid outdid herself in the patron saint department. She’s the patron saint of (deep breath here): babies, blacksmiths, boatmen, brewers, cattle, chicken farmers, children whose parents are not married, children with abusive fathers, children born into abusive unions, dairymaids, dairy workers, fugitives, infants, mariners, midwives, milk maids, nuns, poets, poor, poultry farmers, poultry raisers, printing presses, sailors, scholars, travelers, and “watermen” (whatever those are).

Maybe Brigid deserves a parade too, huh? Doesn’t she seem a little unsung?

Patrick made magic with shamrocks and banished a lot of snakes from Ireland. Brigid performed at least eight miracles, founded several abbeys and monasteries, and built a school of art. Need I say more?

We have a St. Brigid’s Cross in our house, which legend says protects the home from any sort of harm. We also have a framed copy of her Blessing, which ensures the roof, walls, windows, doors, and fireplaces are all covered. We are all about Brigid.

One closing comment. After returning from Ireland it occurred to me there’s probably a little love for St. David somewhere in the world as well. With a little research I discovered that St. Dave also has his own cathedral. It’s on the west coast of Wales in the county of Pembrokeshire. As the crow flies it’s less than a hundred miles from Brigid’s place in Ireland.

I think our next trip will be to Wales.

sensational

The weather is a popular topic this time of year in Colorado. Snow and frigid temperatures are the norm so everyone like to guess “how many inches of accumulation” or “how many degrees below zero with wind chill” we’ll see with a given storm. If the snow or the low temps last long enough our moods are affected by what we call “snow fatigue”. Summer cannot come soon enough.

Winter weather is a favorite headline on the local news as well. Last week Colorado had its first major snowstorm of the season and the networks went bananas. They love to increase your blood pressure with labels like “Breaking News!” and “First Alert Forecast!” Fully half the stories covered in thirty minutes of news this time of year have to do with the weather. Which leads me to the following annoying conclusion: the news over-reports the weather. Their hype would have you believe we’ve never seen the white stuff in Colorado before. Their forecasts are often more extreme than what Mother Nature delivers. And the “news” stories they attach to the forecast seem designed to increase worry and stress levels. This is a perfect example of sensational reporting.

My favorite news stories about the weather involve on-the-spot reporters. Last week these brave souls went to the grocery stores the night before the storm to see how quickly the shelves were being cleared. You’d have thought the world was coming to an end. It was all delivered with a sense of “better get your supplies now”, as if Colorado was about to enter the next Ice Age. In the end, barely 36 hours later, there was less than a foot of snow and plenty of bread and milk left on the shelves. I guess we got lucky – again.

I find the weather news entertaining when some junior reporter is elected to stand out on the road to talk about accumulated snowfall. I get to sit in my pajamas in front of the fireplace at ten at night while this person is huddled on my television screen in several layers of clothing, alone on some dark highway. To add insult to injury, our news channel leads the story with a split-screen between this reporter and the in-studio weather guy. And they always go to the in-studio weather guy first. I can never fully concentrate on his forecast because I’m thinking about Junior out there in the snow and sub-zero temps, waiting for the cue to deliver his little two-minute report. When they finally get to him his speech is a little slurred and his teeth are chattering and you wonder if his hat or microphone will blow away before he’s done talking.

Admittedly, a good portion of our weather reports are useful. Forecasters in these parts are good at what they do, especially considering the Rocky Mountains just to the west of us can alter weather patterns on a dime. There have been times when the forecast calls for snow to start at 2pm, and darned if the snow doesn’t actually start at 2pm. Or they’ll predict a wind chill temperature within a few degrees of actual. Now that’s what I call sensational (to use the secondary definition of the word!)