2020 Hindsight

A (post) Lake George Diary, day 19 - Snow Day!

I'm back in New Hampshire, staying with my cousin and her family. The snow was coming down fast n furious first thing, so the radio announced that it was a snow day--no school. The cousinlings (my term for children of cousins, so much better than "first cousin, once removed") shot outta bed with enthusiasm that never gets expressed on a school day.

There's a snowman outside, who arose out of the newly-fallen snow and their exuberance. Once my clothes are outta the dryer, I'll go out and get a snap of it and post it here.

We watched the SuperBowl last night. Hm! The SuperBowl is a nighttime game here on the east coast! The cousinlings were watching, and each time there was a commercial, they'd holler, "commercial!" so I'd know and show up. I liked the EDS cat-herding one the best, tho the brittanica.com and the yellow-background, typewritten screen (Information-something-or-other-dot-com) ones were also good. Of course, during the second half, I stayed for both the game and the commercials. That last quarter was exciting, wasn't it?

Tomorrow is the primary day in New Hampshire. All this buzz and I'm gonna be here on NH primary day. What a kick! (yes, I'll take pictures!)

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< Lake George Day 18 | (Post) Lake George Day 20 >

A Lake George Diary, day 18 - Leaving the Lake

<sniffle> Today I leave. After I make this entry, I'll be packing up my computer and other things. My brother is driving me to my cousin's house in New Hampshire.

I was commenting on the sparkling snow this morning at breakfast, and grandpa told us about how the crystals form on the top of the snow. Amazingly enough, the story came around to Langmuir and his research on ice crystals that went into cloud-seeding. All of this is related to that book about Atmosphere that I was talking about in Lake George Day 17.

Yesterday, my brother was helping our grandpa do some things on his computer:

My brother and I went walking yesterday; I showed him my usual photo-taking haunts and all the cool things that this Nikon Coolpix 950 can do, including take self portraits. Here we are on our walk:

We saw lots of sparkling light on snow. My camera batteries ran down, but I got some new ones and ran out in the diminishing sunlight to capture a bit of backlit sun and snow on trees...

....and some of the patterns of amber sun and blue shadow on the road that goes from the town road to the White Camp:

Now that this is posted, it's time to get this computer packed up. We are trying to stay ahead of a storm front that is due to arrive in New York tonight or tomorrow. My brother's offer to chauffeur me is taking him well out of his way. So I'm publicly declaring my acknowledgement that I owe him!

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< Lake George Day 17 | (Post) Lake George Day 19 >

A Lake George Diary, day 17 - Glitter and Percolator

Sunny. It was -4 when I got up, and is now +22 as I write this. The lake is frozen over from where we are. Yesterday there was a narrow channel of liquid out in the middle of the lake; today it is solidly covered over.

Ice stretches across the entire lake to the other side

Visitors come and go. Yesterday my uncle and aunt --and the dogs-- left. Today at noonish, my brother arrived for a weekend visit.

Before my brother showed up, I was looking at the sun glinting off of snow outside the dining room window. Snow sparkles with tiny flashes of glittering light. I remembered Christmas cards from years past that would show a snow-covered wintry scene, and little specks of clear glitter. As a Californian who didn't have much in the way of context for understanding, I didn't think much of the cards, other than they were fancier than the other kind. But today's glittery snow brought to mind the glittered Christmas cards.

Icicles and sparkling snow

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I got out some more of my grandmother's work correspondence from GE (She worked as a company-wide consultant on matters of heat transfer).

also referred to here and here.

Here's an offering from 1954:

Schenectady, November 1, 1954

Mr. E. A. W_______

Electric Housewares Dept.

Allentown Pa.

On Friday, November 12th, I am expected to appear on the WRGB television Program (at 1: pm) called "Excursions in Science". The general subject is heat transfer.

As I am to speak to an audience consisting primaily of housewives, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the design problems involved in one of our appliances. Naturally, my thoughts turned to the percolator. I thought I might start in by saying "1954 has been a fine year for weddings, and I have bought five of these percolators (showing one) for my young friends. This happened to be a device in which I had a hand."

Then I should like to explain some of the factors which enter into the design of the percolator with particular reference to life tests. If you still have some of the melted wires and mica, as well as one of the bands showing discoloration, I would like to explain these, their life under tests, and the "fix" that was introduced, thus I would wind up with a happy ending.

You may think that this will scare everybody who has ever bought a percolator, and even make them start undoing the brazes to see how the innards are getting along.

If you think this is a bad idea, will you wire me saying "no" and then I will turn my attention to some abstruse problem that won't give away any Company secrets.

Later in the letter book, where she gives her monthly report of activities (presumably to her boss), she referred to the event in the following way:

Impersonation of Tallulah Bankhead

Heat transfer problems with special reference to the Company percolator were presented on WRGB's "Excursions in Science".

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< Lake George Day 16 | Lake George Day 18 >

A Lake George Diary, day 16 - Ice and Atmosphere

It's sunny today. The temperature has been hovering around 10; it got down to 0 or a little below that last night.

Each day the ice on Lake George advances further over its surface. I first saw ice cover the lake a little south of here, where the lake is narrow. That ice surface has been gradually creeping north, to where we are. Today, looking out the windows of the White Camp, we can see ice on the surface out in front of Smith Bay.

The boundary of the ice, as seen yesterday, south of our location

Looked at one way, my nearly-daily picture-taking forays are a process of documenting the gradual freezing-over of Lake George. Yesterday afternoon, I saw someone out on the surface of the ice, presumably fishing. (He's the little black speck in some of the pictures which I may or may not be successful at uploading here.)

Out on the lake surface, a man fishes through the ice

I love going out to take pictures, especially if it's warm enought that I can be outside for a while before my fingers freeze. When I left yesterday, I said, "See you later! I'm going to go outside and harvest some light!" Since the days of snow, my normal spots now require wading through snow that's mid-calf height.

Twilight view of the lake and cloud

The bookshelves here at the White Camp are filled with various nature guides: birds, trees, animals. We've referred to them to identify the birds that come to the feeders, and to identify different kinds of trees. Today I saw a new one, in the Peterson Field Guides series. This one is for Atmosphere, discussing and illustrating clouds, rain, snow and storms. The authors are Vincent J. Schaefer and John A. Day. As I oohed and aahed over it (after all, Bryce makes atmospheres! The better you can read clouds, the better clouds you can recreate!), my grandpa and uncle told me about how that Schaefer, Vonnegut (elder brother of Kurt, the writer) and Langmuir were all at GE, and their research and invention of cloud-seeding was part of the laboratory doings at General Electric.

I am getting the impression that GE was responsible for tons of innovation-- the fridge, lightbulbs, turbines (what my grandfather's career was focused on) and then some.

Anyway, I've been looking through the Atmosphere field guide book, and commend it to any and all Brycers, as well as to anyone who wants to make more sense of clouds and weather and skies. The ISBN is 0-395-33033-5.

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< Lake George Day 15 | Lake George Day 17 >

A Lake George Diary, day 15 - We gotta houseful!

The temperature's been hovering near 10. The sun's been out all day (gorgeous!), and the house is filled with people--and dogs! My uncle and aunt and their two labradors). When I came downstairs, the kitchen was warmed by a fire in the Franklin Stove, lit by my more-of-a-morning-person-than-I-am uncle. Toasty! Then my uncle and aunt went to Ti (Ticonderoga) for some supplies, returning just as Grandpa and I were finishing our breakfast.

So there's been lots of doings and goings on here today. My aunt (a nurse) was taking my grandfather's blood pressure with some automagic sphygmonamometer (or however they're spelled) that does it all for you. I put my arm in the cuff, she pressed the button, and the reading ended up being zero. "Susan, you're dead!" she blurt out. "Well, if personal sensation is to be trusted over instrumentation, I feel fine!" I tried it on the other arm, but the result was the same. I'm not dead, yet!

I'm trying to upload some files today via email and ftp -- stuff for my book -- and am getting frustrated by the more than 30-minutes required to upload a 68K file. Grrrrr!

Earlier, my uncle, seeing how happy my grandpa is now that I've been spoiling him by keeping him company and cooking his meals, was trying to convince me to stay longer than I have planned to. I laughingly replied that I can only take this low bandwidth (and glacial uploading speed) for a limited period of time! Heh-- Spoiled-by-fast-net-access-grandkids, I tellya!

I've also been having trouble accessing this 2020 site (I'm composing this is BBEdit); the connection keeps getting refused. <sigh> Well, if you are reading this, I was successful.

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< Lake George Day 14 | Lake George Day 16 >

A Lake George Diary, day 14 - Snow and More Snow!

It's 25 degrees and snowing. Snowed yesterday and last night. There was about 8 or so inches of snow when I got up.

Snow atop the bird feeders from this morning

I've got some pictures of snow that I have been trying to upload, but after a dozen "socket not connected" I'm getting sick of trying. Besides, my uncle is on his way up here, and I don't want to tie up the fone line attempting to socket-connect when he may be trying to call in from the road.

Garret had a nice comment about my photos (see yesterday's entry and my Photos of Ice on Lake George page.) He's commending a photographer named Freeman Patterson. I'm reading his artistic statement about how he shoots and his outlook. It's intriguing! Also, when it comes to what to upload from what I've shot, I'm pretty ruthless in deciding what goes up. I've shot 300 images so far, and have uploaded perhaps 2-3 dozen. They have to be good to go to the trouble of retouching and the mega-trouble of uploading. 'Specially when uploading can be such a socket-connecting pain. : /

I'll try again later with the fotos... specially as two of 'em are a new technique-- compositing two images together, one shot with flash, the other without. Working with digital images from the get-go begets some new techniques!

Coming back to the White Camp from the trail in the dusk

Clay Hagebusch, a prolific and talented Brycer, made a winter-summer Bryce scene sorta inspired by my fotos here. (He takes his inspiration wherever he can and runs with it!). I'd like to do some Brycing based on what I've seen, but I gotta write about Bryce and can't really be doing Brycing.

Evening update. . . Got two of the images uploaded. My uncle and aunt are here and the evening has been passed in more stories. People that they remember, and that I only have heard about. But their genes are in me, too.

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< Lake George Day 13 | Lake George Day 15 >

Photos of Ice on Lake George

Smith Bay is completely covered over with ice
Docks grow icicles. When I've walked on the docks, I hear a devilish crash-tinkle-tinkle as icicles formed between the boards break off and fall below.
Some docks keep the surrounding water from freezing over by using a motored agitator. This agitator developed an ice-hood.
The boundary bewteen frozen and liquid has some fascinating forms.
Plant life on the shore's edge grows fingery icicles
Reflecting off the frozen surface of the lake, the sun descends beyond the western ridge of Lake George.
Looking south, the clouds pick up the color of the sinking sun.
After the sun set, the western sky continues to glow.

A Lake George Diary, day 13 - Snow, Stories, and Cookies

Snow It's 20 degrees and snowing-- in a big way! (about an inch so far this morning!) When I woke up this morning, it was dark and gray, the snow began by the time I was downstairs drinking my morning tea.

Yesterday it was quite warm, too-- it got up to 32. With the sun out, it set the roads and roofs to thawing some. But all that has changed today; this is the heaviest snowfall I've seen yet, and we're still only an hour to an hour-and-a-half into it.

I went out and took lots of pictures yesterday of the lake near sunset; the ice covers more and more of the surface of the lake. The colors of the sky reflected off the ice in lovely pearlescent shades. I'll post them later.

Sun peeking from behind clouds on the other side of Smith Bay

Stories After dinner, Grandpa told me some stories of growing up in a mining town in Colorado, and of the strike of 1913 (the miners were on strike for a year!), and how things got better after John D. Rockefeller Jr. came out to Colorado to see what the conditions were. One of the guys from town came into a store and reported with amused skepticism that "that man out on the porch says he's John D. Rockefeller!"

Cookies Later, his reading of the Wall Street Journal brought him to an editorial on privacy and data, written by Charles J. Sykes (author of "The End of Privacy", St. Martin's Press). The editorial starts out with the recent Supreme Court decision that states can't sell driver's license records, and explores various issues from there.

Grandpa read me this sentence from the article: "A recent survey found that 86 of the top 100 e-commerce sites plant 'cookies' --identifying markers-- on users' computer drives, sometimes without their knowledge." Then a lively discussion ensued!

He launched into a spirited discussion of the evils and immorality of the cookie-setting process, especially the invasion of personal property (hard disk) by those people out there from those web sites.

I countered with an explanation of the way that cookies, by holding a tiny bit of information on the local hard drive, make possible a meaningful two-way conversation between surfer and web site. (I couldn't operate this web site, for instance, without a cookie).

No good technology discussion is complete without a demo, if a demo can possibly be had. We huddled around my computer so I could show him the contents of my cookie file, as well as surf to a site that had a Cookie FAQ. (Thanks, Google!) I needed some info to shore up my understanding of what cookies are and do.

Then I showed the ways in which cookies are useful, setting up a personalized "My Weather.com" site to display weather conditions as I want to see them. So, Grandpa is now aware of the practical and helpful uses of cookies. He's also aware of the handy ways to scuttle attempts to collect marketing data: Weather.com has some required fields for the sign-up form for my.weather.com, including first and last name, zip code and email address. I put my first name: Riggy and last name: Diggy -- an expression that may be from the vaudeville ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Mortimer.) For all that I waxed fulsome on the usefulness of cookies, I don't like being a marketing subject and will only provide accurate personal information if I really really really want to.

Just saw this article: What happens to personal data once online firms are bought out?

Evening Update Lots of snow, lots of snow. Temperature in the teens. And, a photo essay bonus! Photos of Ice on Lake George

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< Lake George Day 12 | Lake George Day 14 >

A Lake George Diary, day 12 - Acclimating to Winter

In Which A California Native Acclimates to Winter:

Saturday I found myself going outside to do some quick errand, such as grabbing the ash bucket or a sack of clothespins off the front porch, without bundling up in jacket or gloves or hat, and getting back inside not long after the cold began to penetrate. Later, I went out to the bunkhouse (above the barn) to hunt for a few more notebooks of my grandmother's GE work correspondence.

"Hey Grandpa! I went out there without putting on my hat and gloves and all that. My blood must be thickening; I'm getting used to this weather. I wouldn't have done that a week ago!" Heh. It's also very warm inside on account of firing up the Franklin Stove to burn the trash, so I know I return to a verrrrrry toasty room.

Friday, I discovered the true meaning of a phrase that I've often heard before: WIND CHILL. The sun was out; the snow was bright. Oh! So beautiful! I want to take pictures! The thermometer read 6 degrees. "Okay, that's cold but it's something I can stand," I thought, and I went out without the scarf for the ears and throat (a lesson I learned while getting those lovely pix for my Risking Hypothermia was Rewarding adventures). With only hat, gloves and coat, I went.

The lake's surface is choppy due to all that wind

The wind was blowing. By the time I got down the trail to the lake shore, where the wind blew straight in to Smith Bay, the icy winds whipped at my coat, and took numbing hold of my exposed neck. My nose and ears stung. Inside their gloves, my fingers discovered the territory that lies somewhere between cold and pain and throb and numb. Grandpa had said, "Don't freeze your fingers off!" as I went out the door, which I airily dismissed with a "Thanks; I've no intentions of doing so!" But outside, the wind bit me, I repented of my breezy (!) reply while I breathed warmth into my gloves. Taking pictures, I'd look at my index finger and will it to press the shutter. Then I'd watch the LCD screen to judge the result, since my finger no longer communicates with me about its success or failure at my command to press the shutter button. About all it can tell me is, "Numb!"

Californians, say it again: "Wind Chill." People here in the north east have a gut-level understanding of it, the same way that we know how much respect to grant a four, five, six, or seven on the Richter scale. Wind chill can drop the temperature another dozen degrees. It wasn't 6 above zero outside, with a 10-knot breeze, it was at least a good 6 below zero!

Wind-blown snow creates small snow-dune formations on the ground

Since being at Lake George, I find myself understanding Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion in ways I never knew. This last two weeks, the show has made more sense. Keillor will talk of winter and freezing, and of red, exhilarated faces, and of cold and snow and of haunting thoughts of death and survival. Oh, I'm sure I've heard those kinds of monologues other years, during other winters. But the last two Saturdays, his sonorous words hurled themselves out of the radio, marched up to me and shouted, "YES!!!!" Would it be putting it too mildly for me to say, I Get It Now! ? You betcha!

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My friend Julie, who is a cartoonist, has had an online comic strip called Geeks. She just put up a new one! Go see it! (Mom, Dad, if you're reading this, click these words!)

Hanging out with my 99-year-old grandpa, I've been watching him use his computer. He uses it for working with finances/taxes, writing essays, conducting email correspondence with his family, and surfing the web--primarily to check the Weather.com site.

It's been a learning experience for me to watch him operate, and to see his response when Weather.com changed their site layout. ("Where is that link to the map? It used to be right here. They changed this whole thing; I used to click right here to get to the map!") When installing a Y2K-compliant version of Quicken the other day, he was saying "The computer and I don't speak a common language. I can usually guess at what they're getting at [in the dialog boxes], but they never ask me something directly that I can answer for sure."

Then again, it's been a learning experience for him to see me sit here at this desk tap-tap-tapping and clicking away, and tying up the fone line so that we don't hear from telemarketers (!) while publishing this site from my little Powerbook and digital camera.

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< Lake George Day 11 | Lake George Day 13 >

A Lake George Diary, day 11 - Mugging for the Camera

Grandpa's beard has grown in enough to where it looks like a beard and not a scraggle-face. So he consented to my taking his picture for this site.

Here, the two of us mugged for the camera. (I like the digital cameras with the swivel lens, so you can watch yourself taking your own picture--narcissistic and handy, that!) "Oops! I guess I had better tell you when I'm about to press the shutter!" . . .  "Oh, I'm gonna be vain and put on a little lipstick, at least." "See, you can look at the picture immediately afterwards and see if it came out well." "Can you get rid of the ones you don't like?" "Yes, see this little trash button right here? I can just get rid of them." "That's quite a rig you've got there with that camera."

Later last night, after Grandpa checked his email and the weather web site, I showed him how to get to this site. (Till now, he's been aware of it by looking over my shoulder at my computer, or --mostly--from what I have been telling him.) "That's the yard!" he exclaimed, as he looked at yesterday's entry. "We're lookin' at this over the web?" "Yes." "Hm!"

I've been telling him about the comments that have come in, both in email and in the Discuss section. Yesterday, a discussion thread took off in the Introduce Yourself section-- Garret Vreeland said that the reason he comes here is to compare maintaing three-holers versus maintaining Manila sites. ; ) A story emerged, of course-- of humanely killing horses, and of Dead Mule Canyon.

By the way, if you haven't done so already, please Introduce Yourself! This 2020Hindsight site is not a one-way thing; you can join the discussion, too! Who knows? What you post may inspire the quoting of German poetry in response!

Today's weather 15 degrees-- (up from about 4 degrees when I first looked at the thermometer this morning) Weather.com says we're on a warming trend this week. Highs in the 20s and lows in the teens. Heat wave! It just started snowing again.

Evening Update. . .The snow let up not long after it started this afternoon. Weather web site says we'll have snow tomorrow. I wish I could send some to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Dave Winer, on his Scripting News site, posted links to his new digital pix taken with his new Nikon Coolpix camera (same as mine, way way cool camera!!) and claimed Newbieness. So I posted a bunch of gratuitous advice on his site. Now a three-way site conversation has started, with Kate Adams chiming in from her experience with digitally editing pictures.

What I love about this (besides a conversation that leaps over three different web sites!): The last few years, I've seen this Frontier software, with all its capabilities, making me go "hmmmm!" and challenging me to get some semblance of code-savviness (well, at least I tried). But in the meantime, Dave and the other UserLandians came out with Manila here at EditThisPage and I can giddily forget the code and stuff that never really made it fully into my brain, and concentrate on writing and illustrating and pontificating. But turnabout is fair play: he gets a digital camera and needs digital imaging advice, which I can cheerfully dispense from my years of working with the medium. (Someone told me that this is what the web is all about; do you think that person was right?)

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< Lake George Day 10 | Lake George Day 12 >