Same procedure as every year, James ...

We've reached the year's end and stand, tired and a little apprehensive, at the cusp of the new one ahead.

I decided to share the wonderful "Dinner for One" with you again this year. Every Silvestre, or New Year's Eve, Germans watch this delicious old British skit, televised for the first time in 1963 in Hamburg, and laugh uproariously as it unfolds. They've seen it countless times, but that hardly matters. It just tickles them. Interestingly, it's hardly known in Great Britain, where it originated, and now only comes to America via the Internet.

When I lived in Northern Germany, we spent each New Year's Eve with our friends Colin and Marian, walking the four or five blocks from our flat to theirs. He was British; she German, and there was just no way that the New Year could be born in their company without many, many glasses of Champagne. At least two glasses would be toasted and quaffed before 8 p.m., but as the clock chimed the hour Marian would turn the TV on, Colin would fill each of our flute glasses, again, and we'd watch "Dinner for One" with 90-year-old Miss Sophie, her loyal (and amazingly dedicated) butler James, and her four dear old gentleman friends, all of whom had long since passed on to the Great Beyond.

And we'd laugh. Each time Miss Sophie proposed a toast, we'd raise our glasses to her in tandem with James, and by the time the short skit ended, we'd be gasping with laughter and like the butler, more than a little tipsy.

For Colin and Marian, watching the skit every New Year's Eve was an old tradition. For us, it was new but a tradition we quickly came to love. We looked forward to joining Miss Sophie and James each year, just as we looked forward to celebrating the change with our friends and braving the sub-zero temperatures to bang pots and pans on the balcony at midnight. We added our noise and shouts to the ships blowing their foghorns in the harbor, the cars and trucks laying on horns and all the other people just like us throughout the city, ringing in the New Year with laughter, hope and joy.

We saw the turn of six New Years before we left Germany. During that time, the Berlin Wall fell and East and West Germany reunited. The Cold War ended. Much has changed in the 20 years
since the first time I saw James trip over that tiger rug, yet even without the benefit of a glass of bubbly, it still makes me giggle and before long, laugh out loud.

"Same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?" Well, of course. Happy New Year, everyone.

Tock-tick-tock-tick

The year slips quickly away. Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and then it's 2009, an auspicious year for many reasons.

It's the year Barack Obama takes over as President of the United States and George W. Bush slinks out the back door with a shit-eating grin, having failed at yet another endeavor. It's the year America starts cleaning up George's mess, but it's going to take a long time. A whole string of years.

And 2009 is a year of unknowns. Yes, all new years are like that. We don't know what the future holds. But we know that the world's economy is in recession, that the world's oil supplies are running out, and that global warming is causing dangerous climate change. 2009 ushers in, I believe, a lot of drastic, shocking change. We'll have to learn to be patient with each other.

Perhaps we'll learn how to get to know our neighbors, and be better friends, and reach out to help others less fortunate than ourselves. Because we'll all be facing the same problems, and we're going to need each other for help and comfort.

As far as I'm concerned, 2009 can't come fast enough.

Ho Ho Ho

Merry Christmas!

Gentle Christmas ...

My Solstice season wish for all of you

is for a happy, peaceful and very gentle Christmas Eve

and Christmas Day.

May this magical season be filled with

love, warmth, and joy

as we look ahead with hope to the new year.

--Wren

We're cool, either way

Heh.

Tip-o-the-cap to Sullivan.

Snowy memories ...

The snow has stopped for now. It’s cloudy, but there’s some blue sky and a little sun. The forecast calls for a little more snow today. Tomorrow should be sunny, and then snow again on Thursday.

As I shot the photos above out my kitchen window, the scene – snow, branches, evergreens, blue sky and thin white clouds – brought up some memories. So I made myself a cup of coffee, cleared the hot ash from the dying woodstove fire and started a new one. As I watched the hungry flames lick around the dry wood, I let my mind wander ...

It was January, 1988. I was working as a civilian writer/editor with the U.S. Army Norddeutschland Public Affairs Office in Bremerhaven, Germany. Winter in the north of Germany is a long, drawn-out season, filled with frigid wind, rain, occasional light snow and ice. Lots of ice. By this time, after living there for two years, I’d learned the hard way how to dress for the weather, and every morning was a ritual of donning a hat, gloves, a thick wool coat, a knit scarf and warm, sheepskin-lined boots over several layers of clothing that included ski socks and at least one sweater. I carried my dress shoes in a tote to change into once I’d reached the relative warmth of my office.

I’d made a good number of friends since arriving in Germany, and a couple I’d grown close to suggested that we get a group together and go skiing. Now, Norddeutschland is flat as a pancake, except for the dikes that hold back the North Sea, and there’s not enough snow to ski on, really.
So I asked, innocently enough, “but where?”
“The Alps!”
The Alps. I’d heard of them, of course. I’d seen stunning pictures of those snowclad, craggy peaks and swooping valleys. I’d even seen Clint Eastwood in “The Eiger Sanction,” though it wasn’t exactly encouraging, all those climbers falling off the mountain and all. But my friends were insistent. Civilian DoD workers, they’d lived in Germany for many years and were avid skiers. They were tired of the wind, the rain, and the flatness of the terrain. And they convinced me that not only could this be done, it would be a blast.
So we put the word out. Before long, we had a group of 12 who wanted to go skiing for a week in the Alps and had both the money and the vacation time accrued to do so. Somehow, it became my job to organize the ski trip – find the right place, make our reservations and get everyone lodged, figure out the train schedules and set it all up.
I should say here that at this point in my life, my only experience on skis consisted of one horrifically cold, school-sponsored, day-long ski trip to Mammoth Mountain when I was a sixth-grader. I learned to snowplow, but once I fell down, I stayed down. I just couldn’t get the hang of standing up again on skis unless I took the damned things off. In addition, I’m afraid of heights.
The big day arrived. We met, the 12 of us, in the wee hours of the morning at the Bahnhof in Bremerhaven, loaded down with suitcases, skis, poles and ski-boots. We were headed for St. Veit, Austria, via Bremen, Franfurt, and Munich in West Germany, and then on to Salzburg, Austria. At each station we’d need to change trains.
It had all looked pretty easy on paper. In practice, it was chaos. Changing trains was a only minor hassle in Bremen, which has a medium-sized train station and only six or seven platforms. It helped that my friend R and her husband T, both of them ex-CIA agents, spoke German rather well. We humped our gear off the Bremen train to another platform and waited for the Frankfurt train to arrive. When it did, we all climbed on, found our compartments and got our tangle of gear stashed, and settled down for a pleasant ride to Frankfurt. We even indulged in a nice, hot breakfast with lots of strong coffee in the dining car. Yes, they really did have white tablecloths and roses on the tables.
The afternoon transfer at Frankfurt to the Munich train was pandemonium. We had a very short time to make our way, carting all our stuff, to the new platform and train. And the Frankfurt Bahnhof is huge – a crowded, noisy hub with what seemed like hundreds of platforms, row after row of shining trains, and thousands of people of all colors and nationalities. The train we were booked on, of course, was at the other end of the station. We made it, but barely, and by the time we found empty compartments and storage, everyone was puffed, sweaty and tired. There was talk of driving the whole way in caravan next time, if there was a next time.
We had enough time for plastic-wrapped sandwiches off a cart and a rest between Frankfurt and Munich. Spirits, both emotional and literal, were raised. The transfer at Munich was much simpler – we didn’t have so far to hike to find our train and by now, we’d worked out a system for dealing with skis, poles and luggage. On we went to Salzburg.
The whole journey, so far, had been lovely – the Germany countryside is picturesque and colorful. But now, the scenery turned beautiful. The hills and meadows, with their small villages, were glorious, dusted with snow, and of course in the distance there were glimpses of the famous Alps. The sun was headed down the sky by the time we arrived in the city of Mozart and the Von Trapp family, and changed trains one last time.
This final train was a local, a milk-run train that stopped in each little burgh along the way. The snow cover grew thicker. Finally, we reached our destination station. I can’t recall its name now, but it wasn’t St. Veit, as St. Veit didn’t have its own train station. We unloaded once again. This was a very small Bahnhof, with just one track and platform, and a tiny, empty hall. Except for the stationmaster and a bundled-up woman behind the magazine and candy counter, the 12 of us formed the entire crowd. It was breathtakingly cold.
We’d booked our week with SiegiTours, a ski school, resort and lodging operation in St. Veit. Within 15 minutes two vans arrived at the station to take us there. We all piled in and off we went, winding along narrow mountain roads that were clotted with snow and ridged with ice.
When we reached the village of St. Veit it was dark, but the fronts of the chalets and the village square were all lit up, including the magnificent, 1000-year-old church that dominates everything. All around us rose the Austrian Alps. Snow stood two feet deep. Icicles hung from the eaves and underfoot, the pavements were treacherous.
I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven.
Stay tuned … there’s more to come. Also, please pardon the lack of spaces between paragraphs or even indents -- Blogger is not cooperating.

Old world ...

Just as I anticipated, the snow is falling and my world, such as it is, is nearly silent.

I can hear no traffic from the freeway down the mountain from us. Either the snow has closed the passes up above us, making it impossible to get over them, or people are just staying home.

What I can hear is the chip-chip-chipping of a small bird in the tree in my side garden, and the sound of the wind whooshing through the evergreens, rhymically, like ocean waves. I can hear, through my open window, the sound of the fine, dry snowflakes when the wind blows them against the glass, a sound like tossed sand. Now and then a neighborhood dog barks. His voice is muffled. No echo.

It’s just beautiful.

In the living room, the fire in the woodstove crackles and pops over a three-inch bed of hot, glowing coals. The stove-fan blows the super-warm air into the room, making it cozy, but as this is our only form of heat in the winter, the further away from the stove you go, the cooler the air gets. So we pad around the house in sweatshirts and sweatpants and thick socks. I wear my wool slippers over mine. The cat and dog both have decided they like the space five feet in front of the stove best of all, and it’s there that they nap, off and on, all day.

The dog also enjoys being outside in the snow, since he has the kind of thick fur that’s meant for this chilly weather. I let him out a while ago. When he came back in, his back and head were coated with snow and he was absolutely joyful. He shook it all off, nonchalantly, on the middle of the kitchen floor before heading for his water bowl for a drink.

I’ve been thinking about what it is about snow that delights me so much. First, it’s a stark, even startling change from the norm. We’ve had warm, or hot, or warmish weather now for nearly a year, almost constant sunshine, and few clouds. To those who live through harsh winters and chilly springs and falls, I know it sounds nuts that I could get bored with sunshine. But I do. I believe that, instinctively, we need to experience the natural change of seasons. Without that change we get discombobulated. Complacent. We need to be able to look forward to something, to prepare for the future, even if it means stacking firewood against the imminence of winter.

Second, I just prefer the cold weather to the warm. I’ve been like that for as long as I can remember. I’d much rather put on warm sweaters and thick socks than shorts and sandals. Perhaps it’s the Finnish blood that runs so strongly in my veins. I’m out of my element in the relentlessly mild California weather. I get bored with it. My personal sense of balance, of being, needs cold weather and snow to reach equilibrium.

And finally, it’s the way snow silences our noisy civilization and remakes the world into something old. It takes me back in time, this silence, to a world not filled with the roar of traffic and the constant jabbering of the TV. I don’t watch much of that even on warm days, but Mr. Wren does. When the snow comes, though, he sleeps in late, burrowed under the down comforter, while I wake early and with joy to the gloriously white, muffled world. I love that I can be inside, warm and cozy, and look out at it. I love the deep, crystal quiet.

I’d probably feel much differently about the snow if I had to be out working in it. But for the moment, this moment, I don’t have to be. And, while it’s freezy cold and snowing right now, within a few days the temperature will rise again and the snow will melt away. Snow is always temporary at this elevation. So I’ll be back to longing for the next snowstorm very soon. With luck, we’ll have several more of them before the California spring comes, way too early.

The first year we lived here was an El Nino year. We moved house in November, 1997. The weather was cool but dry. Within a week, though, it changed. First there was rain, and then it started snowing. And it kept snowing, day after day, week after week, month after month. It even snowed in May.

To say we were unprepared is an understatement. We discovered in the first month that running the electric baseboard heaters would cost far more that we could reasonably afford. The old iron woodstove insert that had come with the house was woefully inadequate. I’d stuff it full of firewood and get it so hot the that the stovepipe that ran up the chimney would glow red, but the stove only warmed the air a few feet in front of it and no more. It was a long and very cold winter for us.

The following summer we got rid of the old stove and, using our tax return money, bought a new, far more efficient stove. I call it Damnthing, a name it earned through no fault of its own, but because it took us inept snowline newcomers a while to learn how to tell seasoned firewood from green and how to start the fire and keep it going. Trial and error. Now, 11 years later, I’m an old pro with the firewood and the stove. I still call him Damnthing, but very affectionately. He keeps us warm even in the chilliest weather as long as we treat him right.

With the economy the way it is, I figure that we’ll live right here, in this house, for at least several more years. I dream of moving back up to the Pacific Northwest (I lived in Washington State for many years, off and on, and loved it there). But I’ll just have to put that dream on the back burner for a while. In the meantime, it’s snowing. There are four inches on the ground now and it’s still coming down. I’m content.

Snow's arrival

Sunday, 1100 hours: Oh, Snow is here! He just belled my old wind chimes on the back patio!

Sunday, 1245 hours: Not sticking on the pavement yet, but everywhere else…

Sunday, 1330 hours: It seems Snow may stay awhile. The cat has taken up his position near the woodstove. Perhaps I should put his bed there. That slate has got to be cold on his undersides.

Still waiting ...

It’s like waiting for an absent minded-visitor, this waiting for Snow.

I keep looking out the windows, hoping to see those first, tiny, floating flakes that dance on the air, preceding the real snowfall, the one that sticks to the ground and the tree branches and coats parked cars in strangely cozy-looking, thick white blankets.

My visitor, Snow, was supposed to be here Friday night. But he didn’t show up. Instead, Rain and Wind swept through, staying only long enough to wake me several times, rattling the window over my bed as they danced around the house and left their calling cards in the form of dampened walkways and new drifts of wet, dead leaves underfoot.

Cold came Friday night, too. Unlike Wind and Rain, who moved on, she settled in, preparing to embrace her lover, Snow. Now she’s everywhere. When I go into the kitchen, away from the glowing woodstove, Cold whispers around my calves and raises prickling goosebumps on my lower back. She’s waiting, too, as impatient as I.

Because Snow is coming, I’m hesitant to leave the house. I don’t want to be away when he arrives, because though I love him, he can be a difficult guest. Snow brings me gifts, among them a deep quiet. When Snow comes, the highway a quarter-mile down the mountain goes totally silent for a while. My neighbors – the fellow with the noisy leaf-blower and motored, unmuffled go-cart; the shrieking children; the old man with the diesel truck that he insists on warming up for 20 minutes every morning, summer, spring, fall and winter – all retreat into their houses and stay near their hearthfires, like I do. The birds go invisible, huddling in the laurel hedge and high in the evergreens, sheltering until Snow moves on. When I venture out, bundled in my thick coat, my cap on my head and my achy hands protected by gloves, his stillness is weighty. He makes me hear my own heartbeat, makes me aware of my breath in my lungs, and how fragile my life is, really.

Yesterday, Snow sent his emissary, Frost. He mimicked Snow for an hour or so and moved on up the mountain, leaving a thin rime of icy, powdered sugar in his wake. Snow sent him to tease me, I know.

And so I wait.

Anticipation ...

A glimpse into Wren’s mind as she learns there’s a good chance of rain and, possibly, snow during the upcoming week-end:

OMG! I’ve got to get ready! I should make a list! Snow! I need to cart enough firewood in to last a few days and nights, at least, and I need to find the ice-melter stuff and put it just outside the door, close at hand. I need to make soup and keep it simmering on the back of the stove just in case we get weary, snow-clotted, half-frozen travelers at the door. What kind would be best? Potato? Beefy vegetable? Chicken? Maybe all three. I’ll get started today. And I should probably make bread, you know? (I don’t know how, but I know I can learn between now and Friday evening.) I need to stock up on storm candles and make sure I have enough coffee and soy creamer to get me through the coldest hours. Hot cocoa! I’ll need some milk to make that. Forget the marshmallows, I’ll just add a dollop of whisky. And there’s all that whipped cream leftover from Thanksgiving. YES! OMG snow! I should probably toss those four, 25-pound sacks of cat litter back into the trunk of the Celica. That’s just in case I’m forced to try to go somewhere during the storm, like in an emergency or something. And I’d best park that dumb little muscle car up on the street or I’ll be stranded, stuck at the bottom of our steep hill as the snow and ice grows deeper and deeper and the wind whistles through the eaves …

Yes, this is a fantasy. The National Weather Service is warning of much colder temperatures, rain and possible snow, but I’ve lived here long enough now to know that the NWS is sort of like an excitable old auntie who thrives on crises, real or otherwise.

Still, I can’t help but to be pleased by this news, which was waiting for me on my Yahoo homepage when I got up this morning. You must understand – the last real weather I saw was back in February, folks. It snowed then, off and on for a week or so, and I was in absolute heaven. Then it stopped. The sun came back out. The snow melted.

Since then, it has rained maybe three times. The longest rainy period lasted a day and a half.

I am longing with every fiber of my being for gray skies, rain, wind, sleet, hail, and snow. I want that nasty weather to come and stay for the winter, like it’s supposed to. California is facing a serious drought and we need the snow desperately so the reservoirs will fill with water come spring. The whole state is dry as a tinderbox.

And those of us who thrive on interesting weather, which includes just about anything except the daily, dull blandness of clear skies, season after season, are just about to jump out of our skins.

Cold, yes! Rain, yes! Snow, YES! What a perfect early Christmas gift. I hope this first real cold front of the season brings a whole series of storms, real storms, all the way through April. Rain and snow. Come on, Old Man Winter! Get those silly Californian weather-haters complaining loudly, bemoaning the gray skies. Make them really appreciate summer when it comes.

That would be … fahhhhbulous, dahling. Just fahhhbulous.

Note: The photo is of the snow outside my kitchen window back in January of 2007. That snowy period lasted roughly two weeks. Then the sun came out again and stayed until February 2008. Sigh.