I have to keep my mind occupied as January drags on and on. I tend to fret over things that I cannot control, like the weather and politics – things that seem especially fretful in the gloomy days of winter. Last week, I entertained my winter weary mind with my ongoing re-reading of The Lord of the Rings. I began the second book, The Two Towers. It has been interesting reading these books after 40 years and having watched the movies many times. Oddly, the books are a bit tedious to me. When I read these books for the first time as a teenager, I was captivated by them. Now I find myself skimming over parts where Tolkien rambles on about things that don’t really have any bearing on the plot. And I skip completely all the songs and poems. I know that amounts to heresy for those devoted LOTR fans, but that’s the only way I’m going to make it through all 1,106 pages of the trilogy. That said, I’m still enjoying most of it.
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| This is the first LOTR trilogy I bought as a teen. |
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| This poster hung on my bedroom wall. |
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| This is the second set I bought when the first fell apart. |
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| This is the official set in my library. |
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| We also have this set. |
I also distracted myself, surprisingly, by contemplating snow. Snow is the dominant feature of the month. At least that has been the case so far this year and certainly was last week. It snowed every day – not always a lot, but at least an inch or so each day. I will admit begrudgingly that snow can be beautiful. When it is fresh and newly fallen it can transform the world into a wonderland of white. We had moments of that last week before it all got plowed and trodden and dirty. But it was snowflakes I was most interested in last week. One morning as the snow was falling, I stood and examined the flakes that were clinging to my black wool coat and I marveled at their delicate beauty. I’ve heard all my life that no two snowflakes are identical. Not only that no two of the billions falling in a single flurry are identical, but that no two in the history of the planet have ever been exactly alike. I was always skeptical about that claim. So I did a bit of research and in doing so I formed a new appreciation for the thing I wish most would go away right now – snow.
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| How things look here most days. |
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| Snow can be pretty - for a while. |
Our English word, snow, comes from our Proto-Germanic language roots, so it sounds a lot like the German – Schnee, Dutch – sneeuw, Swedish – snö, and Norwegian – snø. Not the Latin (snow is nix in Latin) based languages like Italian – neve, Spanish – nieve, and French – neige. The Inuit people have around 50 words to describe snow. In Icelandic there are supposedly 100 words. The Sami people who live in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia have 200! According to the Farmers Almanac, we have around 40 words in English to describe it – words like Firn (snow that is more than a year old, but that has not yet consolidated into ice), Flurry (a brief snowfall that produces little to no accumulation), Blizzard (a violent winter storm that combines strong winds and heavy snowfall), Graupel (snow pellets), Powder (new snow composed of loose, fresh crystals),and Corn snow (coarse, granular wet snow formed by cycles of melting and refreezing). I usually just call it snow, sometimes with a profane or derogatory word preceding it.
Snowflakes form high in the atmosphere when ice forms around some sort of microscopic particle – usually dust or pollen – to create a crystal. The crystal then moves through the atmosphere, being blown around up and down, and as it swirls and tumbles, more and more molecules of water attach and freeze themselves to the crystal. One snowflake may be made up of as many as a quintillion water molecules (that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000)! Water, because of its molecular makeup of two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms, forms six sided crystals, so snowflakes are all somehow hexagonal at some point, but because of the way they form, tumbling through different conditions of temperature and humidity, each one is actually unique. And given that it is statistically improbable that no two ever formed on the exact same dust or pollen grain, it is true that no two snowflakes in the history of the planet – an inconceivable number – have ever been identical. So I’m no longer a skeptic. But I still wish it would go away soon.
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| Amazing snowflakes (photos by Alexey Kljatov) |
Despite being individually unique at the molecular level, snowflakes may look similar. Scientists have classified snowflakes into seven basic types – plates, stellar crystals, columns, needles, spatial dendrites, capped columns, and irregular forms. These are further divided into 35 additional types which are subdivided into 121 subtypes. Sounds pretty complicated.
I learned how to make paper snowflakes when I was small, maybe in second or third grade. But I wasn’t taught to do it correctly. Like many children (I see evidence of this at school all the time), I was taught to fold a square of paper and then cut out parts to make a snowflake. The result was a squarish sort of snowflake, not at all proper. I didn’t learn how to fold the paper to get a hexagon until much later. I love to make paper snowflakes. I love to make each one different and intricate. I make some every year to decorate the windows during the post Christmas winter weeks. Last week I made this year’s batch and taped them in the dining room windows. They will be there until my loathing for snow reaches its peak, usually the beginning of March, when I will take them down and throw them away.
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| Paper snowflakes. |
My other major distraction in winter, unfortunately, is food. I love food all the time, but when it’s cold and bleak outside and I’m having trouble fretting over things, I crave things I really shouldn’t eat. And it doesn’t help that I live in a house with three excellent cooks. Case in point – last week they decided to make cannolis. Miriam made her own fresh ricotta and the dough, then Stacey and Hannah helped with the rolling, frying, and filling. They were delicious and I ate way too many of them.
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| Making cannolis. |
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| The finished batch. |
My musical binge last week was Mozart and out of the 626 works listed in the Köchel catalogue, I chose the 24 Divertimenti. Divertimento means “diversion” or “amusement” in Italian and I selected them because I needed to be diverted and amused. They are light-hearted pieces for different combinations of strings and woodwinds. Mozart wrote the first one in 1771 when he was 15 and the last in 1780 when he was 32 and nearing the end of his tragically short life (he died at the age of 35). They are elegant, graceful pieces, melodic and harmonious – exactly what I needed during a week of dismal weather and societal sadness. I love them all, but one of my favorites is the Divertimento in D K 334. Here is a link to a performance – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6kUgp2amto .
Yesterday I threw out my back while doing laundry. That might sound odd, but there are reasons. First of all, I have something called a spondylolisthesis (from the Greek words spondylos, which means “vertebra,” and listhesis, which means “slipping”). One of my vertebra, L4 in my case, as slipped over the one immediately underneath it. It probably developed when I was a teenager going through my major growth spurt, but it didn’t cause me problems until I was in my 30s. Now and then I do something that aggravates it and I have a bout of terrible back pain. The aggravating circumstance this time was the laundry. Our washer and dryer sit in a nook in the kitchen. The washer is perfectly accessible, but the dryer requires a bit of contorting to get clothes out of it. I was taking out a load of dry clothes and there was that one sock that always lurks in the deepest depths and I twisted and reached for it and – boing! – out went my back. So I am partially immobile for a while. I can stand up, sit down, and lie down if I go slowly and very carefully. Going up stairs is painful. Others will have to do the chores for me as I cannot carry a water bucket to the barn. I feel like a bent over feeble old man. So I’m mostly sitting around, trying to divert and amuse myself with reading and listening to Mozart, but mostly feeling old and maybe a bit sorry for myself. Julie loaned me her wonderful infrared light heating pad and I use that several times a day. I will visit the Chiropractor during the week. I’ll get over it, but in the meantime, I’m annoyed. To cheer me, one of my orchids opened today. I love its bright yellow beauty.
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| My yellow orchid. |
Because of my immobility, I didn’t go to church today. The rest of the family went. I sat at home with my heating pad, and studied the scriptures. It is bright, but cold today. The wind chills is 14°. The irony of winter is that the bright, clear days are the coldest days. There’s more snow in the forecast for the week ahead as January trudges on into its final week.
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| Bright and cold. |
