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I look like me. As the weight melted off, thanks to my Gila Lizard Powers (GLP-1) , the bones in my face re-emerged. One day I happened to look in the mirror over the bathroom sink while I was washing my hands and was startled to see-- me.

"I look like ME." I said it out loud.

Actually, I've never had an STD. For years, though, I thought that I had.

Listen, and I'll tell.

Early Spring and oh, I had the Itch.

Literally. I would lay in bed at night and cry because I couldn't sleep, so badly did I itch.

Finally, I dragged my sorry, sleep-deprived ass in to the clinic. The doctor didn't even bother to examine me. You could see the wheels of homophobia turning in his smug-ass head as he assessed me.

Gay guy, itch: must be venereal, right?

Scabies, he diagnosed.

As I was leaving the exam room, he leaned forward, fixed me with his eye, and said, in the smuggest, smarmiest possible voice: “And have a blessed Easter.”

Yeah, you too, nazz, and the horse you rode in on.

I schmeered on the prescribed goop, and a week or two later, all was well.

So for years I thought that I'd had scabies.

More the fool, me.

You wouldn't know it from our reputation, but in Winter, the North is a desert.

Deep Winter. With prolonged cold, the air loses all moisture. For all the snow on the ground, it's dry, dry, dry, and all the hot showers in the world won't put back what the cold sucks away.

Some survival strategies as we make our annual journey through the High Desert of Deep Winter.

Many of us are bracing before the big blizzard that's due to hit, across the northern Rockies, northern Plains, and Great Lakes area of the Midwest in a matter of 24 hours or so. Not only will there be dangerous snowy conditions, but there will also be strong gusts of wind, and icy, bitter cold. There could be power outages, so folks are advised to hunker down and stock up on food, water, and batteries for their flashlights. The storm is predicted to be at its worst Thursday evening into Friday morning, when many businesses will likely be shut down. At times, it's somewhat disconcerting to realize how addicted we are to electric power and just how helpless we are without it. Even most gas stoves, and water heaters require it to function. If you're not lucky enough to have a fireplace in your home, your only option may be many layers of clothing and blankets to bundle up in and keep warm.

Be Mindful

It seems all the more appropriate then that the Winter Solstice falls today before all of this is supposed to take place. If we're fortunate, it won't quite as fearsome as they're predicting. But I believe it does urge us all to be especially mindful about our activities today as we prepare and slow down and take time to consider how we spend our time and do so with purpose, if possible. Rather than run around willy-nilly like panicked little stress balls, it would do us better to slow down and be selective. Figure out what needs our absolute attention today, and what can transpire naturally while we're snowbound. Run the errands that need to be and decide what can wait. Stop being obsessed with the to-do list and being ahead of the game and become practical and considerate. Because the latest wave of COVID/flu/and RSV, along now with this latest serious potential storm has and could possibly force many of us to be flexible with our holiday plans—we should do just that and let Mother Nature run her course.

Rounding out the year's posts on the holidays of the reconstructed pagan religion Ridnoveri, here are the winter holidays coming up as 2022 turns to 2023. And if you're using this calendar in a leap year such as 2024, be sure to add in the Leap Year day! I'll be posting about that specifically as it gets closer. 

 December

“Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver.”

“My country's not a country, it's Winter.”

(Gilles Vigneault)

Oof: five below. The Ninth Day of Yule, and our first sub-zero temperature of the Winter. It hasn't been this cold for ten months. Well, folks, this is it: Winter is well and truly here.

You never really get used to it, the Cold. After a while it seems to take on a life of its own, to become an entity in its own right: the Hag you cannot see, but only feel.

Ultimately, Cold becomes a way of life. The long underwear goes on and stays on. You leave extra time to get things done, because everything takes longer. (This morning it took me 15 minutes to chip the car out of its carapace of ice: this with the defrost and heat going full blast all the while, mind you. Winter Survival Tip #1: start the car and let it warm up before you begin clearing it.) Keep your face covered. Don't go out with a wet head. Moisturize or die. (Ah, life in the Winter desert.) A driveway is cleared one shovelful at a time.

During the Summer, you close up the house during the day, and open it again at night. Now it's just the opposite.

To open, or close up, though: actually, it's hard to decide. Should I open the blinds and the curtains to let the sunlight in—sunlight warms—or keep them closed against the cold? (When it's this cold, you learn to stay away from perimeters.) In terms of keeping warmth in and cold out, I'm guessing that it's probably a 50/50 proposition. Nonetheless, in the end I invariably cave and open to the light. It may not feel warm on the skin, but the beauty of the young sunlight never fails to lift my spirit. Psychological warmth is still warmth.

Let those in more fortunate climates cringe, and wonder why we stay. Up here in Cold Country, we grok Beltane in ways that most Southrons never, ever will.

 As the Northern hemisphere enters Winter, a bit of seasonal humor from that bilious old Fascist, Ezra Pound, to the tune of Sumer Is Icumen In, the oldest song in English (circa 1350) to which we still have both words and music,.

Pound's piece, in mock Middle English, turns the original on its head. One is about the joys of spring in the natural world, in which humans appear not at all; the other evokes the discomforts of urban winter in a world entirely human, in which nature is reduced to the inconveniences that it brings. (His reference to "winter's balm [=ointment]" refers ironically to the road-slop with which the passing bus has just sprayed him.) The implied contrasts between the two offer a mordant critique of what the West has become. Even Fascists have their occasional points.

You can hear a spirited Winter Solstice performance of this modern classic by the Bayesian choir here (though the audience clearly doesn't get the joke).

Happy Winter!

Antient Music

Winter is icumen in,

lhude sing, Goddamm.

Raineth drop and staineth slop,

and how the wind doth ramm:

sing Goddamm!

Anyone that lives in Minnesota knows that it's less work—a lot less work—to shovel two inches of snow six times than it is to shovel 12 inches of snow once. 6 x 2 ≠ 12 x 1.

Call it Minnesota arithmetic.

It's our first big snow of the Winter. They're saying 8 to 12. Yikes.

All day, the city has been in battening mode, preparing. The grocery stores looked like the day before Thanksgiving, as everyone stocked up.

It's an annual ritual, and everyone's invited. For one brief moment, partisanship and denominationalism are laid aside; for now, we're all in this together, a Blizzard Fellowship. Neighbors help each other shovel out, and strangers push strangers out of snowbanks.

I go out to shovel the first two inches. It's really coming down hard. That's fine with me: call me crazy, but I actually enjoy shoveling snow. I'll take a good blizzard over your hurricane or lava flow any day of the lunar month, thanks very much. No wonder I live here.

I clear the driveway and front sidewalk, then the sidewalks of the neighbors on both sides, just for good measure. "Why do we live here again?" a woman asks, walking past. It's the traditional question.

I give her the ritual answer: "Because we're all clinically insane."

She laughs. "I keep forgetting," she says, trudging on into the wind.