A Curious Statistical Anomaly

I was wandering around this morning and early afternoon, feeling like I was thinking through a fog and wondering where all my spoons had gone. In spite of it all, I’d managed to work my way through a user’s guide and half a system administration guide. That was in prep for some software I’m configuring for a website that I’m working on (contract work). Anyway, seems that caffeine didn’t help and I didn’t dare start to do anything I couldn’t afford to screw up so I was taking notes — imagine real notes in the margins and highlighting the parts I knew I’d have to do later when the brain fog cleared.

I even, in desperation, cleared off the dining room table (currently my desk). More coffee. Considered pain meds but decided against it. I thought I’d just bear with it for a while. Then the thunder started rolling in. Phone rings and Paul says he’s coming home early, they just got a bulletin from the weather service that there were severe storm warning out. I hung up and the wind started to pick up. The sky darkened. The wind really, really, started whipping through the trees. I stood with my coffee and watched a limb come down off one of the huge trees at the end of the driveway. Luckily it wasn’t a heavy one just long and thin and whippy. It was almost beautiful the way it did this slow swirling somersault through the branches and landed in/near the driveway. I wasn’t about to go check on it because the big trees out front were swaying at least two to three feet off plumb.

Then the rain came. It was so heavy I couldn’t even see the plant pots on the deck outside the sliding doors. Luckily, I’d brought in the seedlings when Paul called. We lost the lights of course. They came on about 2 1/2 hours later maybe later.

In the midst of the storm, I finally realize — no wonder I couldn’t think straight. Storm coming — barometric pressure shifts. At least there was a reason for all the internal fog. Finished a book, Maggie Sefton’s Dyer Consequences (My review will be reviewed in Gumshoe Review‘s July issue.)

The radio said hundreds of thousands of people in Maryland and Virginia were without power. Another storm just rolled through staring about an hour ago — actually, it still is, but not as impressive as earlier. From what the radio said it was really bad in some places with a tornado or possibly two. We were luck. Paul said there were at least 8 trees down on the drive home turning the road into one lane but he got home safe.

Nature can be so beautiful and dangerous at the same time. I love to watch lightning storms from the comfort of my home. But enjoying the light show, you can forget just how much raw power is being released with each strike. Then there’s the wind and the damage to property and surrounding natural landscapes (trees, bushes, gardens…).

I hope damage was limited to things…I hate when people and animals are injured or killed in storms. It’s the randomness of the damage. There’s no way you can prepare except for what you can do in general. Storms hit here and not there for no reason other than chance. Nature doesn’t reason — it just is.

Hyperion here. I didn’t tell Gayle at the time, since I didn’t want her to worry, but the bulletin we received said that a line of thunderstorms was approaching at 60 miles per hour. It looked likely to spawn tornados as well, so either get out of the way, or get to a shelter. Since it was heading west to east, and I live east of work, I decided to bug out before the storm hit and out run it if I could. In the five minutes it took me to shut things down and get to the parking garage, the weather went from cloudy, but still, to black clouds, high wind, and torrential rains. The power also started flickering in the building. I was suppose to go to the recycling center and the post office on the way home, but decided I preferred staying alive. I skedaddled home as quickly as I could and did manage to stay ahead of the worst of it. Still, it knocked a lot of tree limbs down onto the road, and even a couple of whole trees. Traffic lights were also out for the last 20 miles of the trip. Miraculously, the other drivers actually slowed down and behave rationally, so other than having to swerve around debris in the road, the trip wasn’t actually that bad. After that we had a nice late afternoon reading by oil lamp and wind-up lanterns, and now the powers back (obviously) and the rain has settled down to a nice relaxing hiss outside.

I always loved Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence. It’s melancholy and matches the mood of a rainy day or one of those days when it rains even when the sun shines and the sky is clear blue. But I got to thinking about silence today and the song popped into my head. I love the lyrics but especially:

People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening

While my thoughts run in a different direction, it does come to a point of a sort. People are always saying: “I couldn’t live out where you do, it’s too quiet”. Well yes, it doesn’t have all the city noises, but trucks go by about a half mile away on the main road. Neighbors do mow their fields with rather loud tractors. Grackles chirp and yell at each other in clouds off and on throughout the day. The squirrels chitter and scamper through the leaves. The winds blows through the trees with a sort of soft shushing sounds, unless of course it’s a storm and then it’s with a loud sort of howling thrum. So it’s not quiet here — there are just different sounds from a city.

Friends were visiting one day and we were sitting with lemonade and talking. The screen door was all that was between us and the outside when our male friend said, “Don’t you have some music or something, this quiet is weird?” The woman said, “Don’t you hear the chimes and the birds — that’s a sort of music?”

I seldom have the radio on. It’s on the upper floor and I have to have it really loud to hear it on the second floor. Playing a CD slows the laptop so I don’t do that either most of the time either. Moving the radio down to the floor I’m on (it does play CDs) is just more trouble than it’s worth most days. So, I work with the sounds of silence or to be more exact, the sounds of nature all around me. I hear the birds, the bees, the hawks, the cars along the distant roads, the thundering crash of a tree limb falling in the woods occasionally for spice, and the gentle sounds of wind and rippling leaves. That’s a music that many people not only don’t hear, but when they are so used to sound/noise/distractions in their environments, they actually find the sounds of silence unnerving.

When I’m out and about I see all the people on their cell phones, talking, listening to iPods and, because they are so awash in sound, they miss the smaller things. Rain on concrete. Doves cooing. And in some places, the screech of gulls fighting over food. There is so much sound everywhere — it’s just what you choose to listen too — or, unfortunately, what you’re often forced to hear.

There are some sounds that raise blood pressure and some that can help lower it. There are sounds that assist learning and others that inhibit learning. There are sounds that can make us irritable and others that can sooth. As our environments at work, on the streets, and at home become filled with sounds, we don’t have much choice or control except over the sounds at home.

What sounds do you prefer when you can control the volume and type? There are times I love loud Techno Rock and others when Jazz or Classical music fits the mood. But most of the time it’s the just the sounds that come through my screen door.

A new study found that pollution in the air changes the scent of flowers, either masking it or shortening the distance over which bees (and others) can smell them. I came across the report and all of a sudden realized that this means big trouble for all of us.

“The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters [3,300 to 4,000 feet]; but in today’s polluted environment downwind of major cities, they may travel only 200 to 300 meters [650 to 980 feet],” said study team member Jose D. Fuentes.

Think about it, bees don’t gather nectar to eat they also pollinate the plants that they gather from. If they are having trouble finding the flowers because pollution has masked the scent it’s a bigger problem than declining bee colonies. If the plants aren’t pollinated then they don’t set fruit. Without pollination many plants just look pretty and the flowers fade and that’s it — no apples, no tomatoes, no whatever else they buzz around.

No one in Congress takes air pollution seriously (hey most people in the US don’t either) but it causes a lot of the acid rain that is destroying much of the forest along our northern borders and in Canada. It causes breathing problem in just about everyone and especially those with asthma and allergies. There’s a reason that in many states ozone alerts mean free bus rides.

We have a great problem with global warming but because we still have winter and summer and all the rest most people just scoff. How long and what disasters will we need to face before we admit that there is a problem and it needs to be treated seriously. This isn’t just a bunch of tree-huggers or granola do-gooders looking for a cause — this is the future of our planet and our species. We can no longer afford to have laws made to “get me elected again”, this country needs an environmental plan that is based on science and not the wishful thinking of those with a political agenda to pretend that it’s all going to go away if it’s just ignored.

It seems like every time some little study comes out there is another data point that is telling us it’s time to wake up pay attention to our wonderful world before it’s too late.

Today is our second day of temperatures in the mid-80’s. Earlier in the week, I’d managed to rake up a lot of the garden area and today we raked the piles onto a tarp and dumped them toward the back of our property. Hopefully, the leaves will compost into soil and by the time we get around to working back that far they will not be leaves still, or less leaf like at least.

I noticed today that the azalea bushes are all filled with buds. We have three fairly big bushes. One on each side of the path to the shed. One between the two trees just in front of the house with the cement fake deer (don’t ask, it came with the house — they couldn’t move it). And a very small one we planted two years ago that is now a middling bush about 1-2 feet high. Two of the bushes have pink flowers and two are a more purple-ish color.

The peony trees also have buds. Seems that each year we get more buds than the year before. We’ve got two peony trees. We also have five peony bushes but only four of them are above the leaves — haven’t raked there yet. We dug around the leaves and the other bush has come up but is under the leaves. Tomorrow we hope to rake the leaves out of that area. I’ve uncovered all the strawberry plants and most of the perennial herb area. The lemon balm is sprouting up and the sage made it through the winter. Three of the lavender plants are also looking good. So, I’m really getting the spring fever to get things ready for the summer garden. Might even start some tomato seeds tomorrow.

On the down side, with the heat we discovered that the heat pump when switched to cool … doesn’t. So we’ve got the fans set up to move the basement’s cooler air up to the living areas. Got the ceiling fans going and the screen door open on the deck. It’s still warmer inside than out but livable. We had this problem last year and the heat pump/furnace thingy (original to the house, so very old) didn’t work and we got the very last part the company had available in this state and it worked the rest of the summer. A few months ago the heat part started going wonky but we have the wood stove so we didn’t mind too much and figured we could last another year if the cooling worked. So, guess now we’ll have to get estimates on getting a new furnace/heat pump which blows the budget to do some work on the basement (I was so hoping for walls and a ceiling down there). Oh, well. I do want AC before we hit the over 100 degree F days in Maryland.

Tonight we plan to turn off our lights for Earth Hour. My husband and I do care about our environment and try to do the right thing. We recycle even though where we live we have to drive it to the recycle center because we’re not on a pick-up route. We plan all our travel in loops to avoid needless miles. Make Do. Recycle. ReUse. Simple sayings to live by.

Here’s more info about Earth Hour:

If you haven’t Googled anything yet today, take a look. The Google logo that changes with holidays and special occasions hasn’t changed but Google turned out the lights on the website (background is black) to help bring Earth Hour to the attention of their users.So, if you care about Climate Change and our environment — Earth — join us in turning out your light between 8 PM and 9 PM tonight, March 29th, 2008.

The Earth needs all the help it can get.

Today I had jury duty. I got the notification quite a while ago and was supposed to call last night to see if my group had to report to the court house — I did. So today, I gathered lots of reading material, bottled water, and lunch and reported to the court house at 7:30. I’ve only done this once before so everything seems new to me.

First you have to go through security to get into the building. Smooth and quick and they let me have my sock knitting. Then sign in with the clerks and wait, and wait, and wait, and get assigned a panel color and number (criminal case), then wait, and wait, and wait some more. Five hours later we were told we were all dismissed. So, we turned in our colored numbered cards and could go home.

Last time I actually got into the court room and the lawyers and the judge whittled down our panel pool of less than a hundred and more than 50 down to the twelve jurors and the four alternates. So, this time it I spent the day in the jurors assembly room. Got a lot of reading done. Drank moderately okay coffee and my bottled water. But even though I forced myself to do isometric stretches every chapter and got up and stood every so often — those chairs are killers. I would have found them guilty in a heart beat. They weren’t even cheap chairs. I’m sure the county government spent an indecent amount on these padded chairs for the assembly room. I’m just not sure why chair manufacturers, especially those making chairs for people to sit in for more than ten minutes at a stretch, can’t make a chair that doesn’t kill your back or put your legs asleep.

So in discomfort and in between breaks, I observed my fellow potential jurors. Most brought something to occupy them during the long waits. Many, as I did, brought a book or two or three. Some had magazines. Some had portable craft projects. Some talked on the phone. Some worked on their laptop or PDA. And here’s the group that baffles me — some did nothing but sit and stare into space usually while turning their colored numbered panel card over and over. I’d go bonkers in about 20 minutes if I had to just sit with nothing to do. In an hour, I’d be climbing the walls. How do they do it? Are they all Zen masters? I’m totally baffled by people who can just sit like that and not go berserk. I’m not sure if I should be in awe of people so centered that they can quietly sit for hours or spend my time wondering what they’re thinking about while they’re sitting there — calmly, turning their cards over and over and over.

After I was dismissed, I called my husband from outside the building and walked a mile and a half to the nearest Starbucks to have coffee and wait for him. We only have one car so these sorts of things are a bit of a scheduling problem. While walking out the back tension, I found the day just wonderful. The sun was out and the sky was bright blue with white fluffy clouds. The forsythia was in bloom with its jaunty yellow flowers proclaiming spring to anyone with eyes to see. The Bartlett pears are also filled with their white flowers. But even more startling because I hadn’t yet noticed them this month was the magnolias — white and pink — beautiful blooms that look so startling on the trees without leaves.

In spite of the chairs, it was a glorious spring day.

Couldn’t sleep last night so I finally got sick of tossing and turning and got up, turned on the laptop and got some work done. So today, after a short nap, I was able to catch up on a lot of things that I hadn’t got to yet. One of which was the image you see here. Tor is giving away free ebooks and I signed up to get a notice. Well, they also have two desktop images along with the book. The others have been pretty impressive but I’ve always loved the work of John Jude Palencar. Last year, I did an interview with him for SFRevu.

This image was for the cover of Charles de Lint’s Someplace To Be Flying. Charles de Lint is an author that I also enjoy and the two together, words and cover, make a wonder pairing. Now I’m going to have this wonderful artwork as my desktop background for a while. Already I find it soothing in a weird sort of way. Maybe it’s the colors, composition, or the subtle symbology. Anyway, thought I’d share.

I’ve been continuing to organize and move fiber and projects into Ziploc bags. So far it’s not so bad — or at least not as bad as I’d feared. The destruction so far:

* one sock with two holes (salvage possible)* one lace shawl 3/4 done eaten so badly the yarn couldn’t be salvaged at all

* one lace scarf with three holes (salvage possible)

* two containers of angora fiber completely yucky — had to toss.

* one spindle of angora yarn chewed enough that it has to be tossed

Not too bad so far. Salvageable projects have been placed in a Ziploc bag and sealed. I figure that way if I missed anything it will come out in the bag and then can be tossed. So, far most of my loose fiber has been okay — or at least looks okay but it was stored with cedar sachets and cedar balls and sprigs of rosemary and eucalyptus — also the final rinse for all fiber is in a eucalyptus scented rinse.

I’ve still got some more boxes and bags to go through but I’m feeling a bit better about all this. At least once it’s done it’s done and I’ll just have to be more careful in the future with what comes into the house. Of course, it doesn’t help that we live on 5 wooded acres in the rural tier of Prince Georges County, Maryland. It’s wooded and farm area so there’s lots of bugs. We’ve managed to gain control on the house but it’s hard to keep bugs out during the summer when doors open and close as you move the screens into play.

The other side effect is that I found I have quite a bit of sock yarn, but not a lot of general stash. Got lace weight for planned projects and none extra. I do have a lot of cleaned fleece ready for spinning. And, oh gee, Maryland Sheep and Wool is coming up in May (the website hasn’t been updated yet)– at least this year I have a better idea what’s in the house.