Earlier this winter I obtained an interesting book from an auction in Europe, a theological work by Thomas Aquinas that was printed 530 years ago this month (1490).
Continue readingAntisocial Distancing
Man, I was preadapted for this. My to-do list is perennially at cubic light-year proportions and is diverse enough to have kept boredom an abstract concept for decades. And we live in a home in the woods with neighbors we rarely see. We did have some unexpected guests drop by the house a couple times last week, but they were welcome, kept their distance, and didn’t stay long.
Continue readingGertrude Gets Her Lips on the Moose Candy
We feed our birds sunflower seed chips. This food is high in energy content and low in handling time. They need that when it’s really cold out and the days are short (on 21 December we have 3 hours and 41 minutes between sunrise and sunset).
Continue readingWhen Mr F Meets Mr C, it’s Cold in Alaska
(I wrote this 20 years ago, before I had a blog. With -40s on us again, it’s a good reminder of the old days, when these temperatures were more frequent.)
It was cold here in Fairbanks for the past couple of weeks—down around -40º for days. That is the temperature where the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales meet. And air that dense tends to hang around for a while when it’s in the neighborhood. With the proper clothes, this isn’t much to get worked up about. It’s too cold for skiing, but strolling around out in the crisp is actually fairly pleasant.
Continue readingA Simple Ladder Safety Device
When we replaced our deck with composite boards on the surface, we could no longer use that surface for our extension ladder, which we need to do to wash the outside of the upstairs windows.
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