June 13: "Fay," Breath and Fury, ""Hail Mary Storm"

Billy Collins on meteorology . . . 

Fay

by: Billy Collins

never amounted

to a hurricane,

just a lot of rain

with a girl's name.

There's a joke told by Yoopers (people who grew up and/or live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan):  if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes and it'll change.

Weather is very unreliable at my longitude and latitude.  I have seen forecasts go from snow flurries to blizzard warnings in the space of a few hours.  I call it the Lake Superior effect.  The big lake just has a mind of its own when it comes to atmosphere and temperament.

This afternoon, I was sitting in my office at the library (which is less than half a mile from the shores of Superior), engrossed in editing a podcast and finishing up a report.  Even though my desk is right by a window, I hadn't looked outside for a few hours.

Then I heard a sound like a semi-truck landing on the roof, and I looked up.  I could barely see across the street through the hail and rain.  The sky had gone ashy black, and the wind was tearing away at the trees.

I sat watching the storm until it lost its breath and fury.  Confession:  I love watching bad weather.  Lightning.  Gale-force winds.  Waves the size of freight cars.  Thunder snow.  Yoopers love this shit.  It's in our DNA.  Prick us, and we bleed winter.

Saint Marty still hasn't put his snow shovels away at home.  You never know.

Hail Marty Storm

by: Martin Achatz

Did Gabriel's greeting

sound like a million

bullets of ice shredding

the air with God's need

for her young body?

January 28: It's Late, Crickets, Prayer of Change

It's late.  Almost 10 p.m.  My kids had another day off from school.  I had another day off from teaching.  In fact, aside from working at the medical office, I didn't do anything productive today.  I think it has something to do with the cold.  It made me want to grab a blanket, sit on the couch, eat enough junk food to feed a small African nation, and watch episodes of The Big Bang Theory.  Maybe I'm pregnant.

The weather's going to be changing tomorrow.  It will be a good twenty or thirty degrees warmer.  That means schools will reopen.  My daughter will have dance class.  I will have to teach.  Everything will return to restart.  Change.  E. B. White writes of change in Charlotte's Web:

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever.  Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year--the days when summer is changing into fall--the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

I know that life is about change.  Sometimes that change brings sadness.  Sometimes it brings joy.  I am not a big fan of change, as many of my constant readers know.  In the past, change hasn't been good to me.  I've been struggling over the last year because of change in my work situations.  Mental illness.  Addictions.  Marital strife.  All these changes have caused me a lot of problems.


But I've come through these changes.  Stronger.  Smarter.  Better.  I'm still not a fan of change.  However, I know I can't avoid it.  I won't embrace it, buy it a negligee, take it home, and ravish it until daylight.  But I also won't take it down a dark alley and pop a cap in its ass.  I will accept it.  Period.

Dear God of change,

I know everything happens for a reason.  I know that light comes with darkness.  Warm with cold.  Happiness with sadness.  You can't have one without the other.

This may come as a surprise, but I want to say thanks for the changes in my life.  If I'm in the middle of a difficulty, I know You're going to see me through.  And that's enough to keep me going.

One little request:  less challenge, more success.  Please.

Your loving servant,

Saint Marty

Food for thought for all my atheist readers.  Change is good.  Even changing your minds.

December 4: Charles Dickens, Mixed Up, a Wednesday Prayer

...Her goddam hat blows off and he catches it, and then they go upstairs and sit down and start talking about Charles Dickens.  He's both their favorite author and all.  He's carrying this copy of  Oliver Twist and so's she.  I could've puked...

It's the time of year to talk about Charles Dickens.  After all, the guy practically invented Christmas as we know it today.  If it weren't for Scrooge and company, we probably wouldn't have the Grinch or George Bailey or Ralphie.  Snow and Christmas trees and presents and Santa Claus and small children with disabilities.  Nothing says Christmas like a dying child singing a carol.  Or a huge family, living in a shabby house, celebrating the holiday with a two-pound goose and an ounce of gin punch.

Yes, I'm feeling very Christmasy tonight.  I'm sitting on my couch, watching an SNL Yuletide special.  Tomorrow is my daughter's thirteenth birthday.  I'm going to her Christmas concert tomorrow night.  Lots of fa-la-la-la-la-laing and decking the halling.

I got a little mixed up yesterday.  Today is Wednesday.  Usually, I write about one of my many worries on Wednesdays.  Well, I got ahead of myself, and I wrote about worries on Tuesday.  This mistake may not seem like such a big deal, but I'm all messed up this evening.  I'm a creature of habit, and I want to talk about worries right now.

For instance, I want to talk about the crappy weather.  It's been snowing all day.  Now, it's raining, and they just cancelled school tomorrow for my daughter.  That probably means that her holiday concert is cancelled, as well.  If the university cancels classes tomorrow, I'm screwed.  I'm supposed to give my final exam tomorrow afternoon.  As I sit here, watching TV, the schools are falling like holly berries in a wind storm.  One by one they're dropping.

Well, I don't control the weather.  I don't control school closings.  I don't control anything.  I'm just going to say a little prayer that things turn out for the best.

Dear God,

 I'm not enjoying this weather.  It's messing things up.  I had plans.  I had my life figured out.  Final exam tomorrow in class.  Concert tomorrow night.  Birthday sleepover for my daughter Friday night.  I don't like it when You change things on me.

I know, I know.  You've got a plan.  You've always got a plan.  I just wish You'd share it with me every once in a while.  You don't have to show me everything.  I don't need to know what's going to happen in Syria or Pakistan.  You don't need to show me what's going to happen in the Middle East.  I'd like a little peak at 2014.   Stuff like jobs and money and family.  But I'll settle for a glimpse at tomorrow.

But that's not going to happen.  It's all about trust.  I have to trust You.  I haven't had good success with that recently.  Trust isn't something I'm really good at.

My prayer is for trust.  Help me to feel Your touch in my life.  And don't screw up my final exam tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks.

Your loving child,

Saint Marty

C'mon, God, give me a break

February 19: If It Ain't Rain...

When I played the Stage Manager in the play Our Town in high school, I remember one line in particular.  I'm pretty sure it was said by an actor playing a dead towns person, and, in a cast of horny high schoolers, it usually caused a wave of dirty snickers.  Imagine me, standing in costume as the Stage Manager (hat and suit coat and pipe and glasses), listening with a straight face as somebody said, "If it isn't a rain, it's a three-day blow..."

Every night, I had to hear that line, and every night, I could hear my classmates laughing backstage.

The reason I'm thinking about that line today is the weather.  When I came to work this morning, it was snowing a little bit, and the roads were a slightly drifted over.  Not bad.  Well, all the schools closed down, and the university where I teach has just canceled afternoon and evening classes.  Each time I look out a window, all is see is a white sheet of wind.  The weather forecaster is now saying this storm is going to last until tomorrow evening.  It isn't quite a three-day blow.  More like a day-and-a-half blow.

I don't mind bad weather, as long as I'm home, in my pajamas, with a cup of hot chocolate spiked with Bailey's Irish Cream in my hands.  However, currently, I'm still at work, and I have about three hours before I can leave.  Perhaps things will be better in a few hours.

And perhaps Saint Marty isn't in the middle of a three-day blow.  Metaphorically, of course.

I took this last night before the storm

August 16: Winter Day, Weather, Rain

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either hand.  The city had entirely vanished.  Not a vestige of it was to be seen.  The darkness and mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground.

The above paragraph is Dickens' description of the beginning of Scrooge's wanderings with the Ghost of Christmas Past.  I think I mentioned before Dickens' use of setting and weather. The Inimitable, as Dickens liked to call himself, is single-handedly responsible for creating the stereotypical Christmas scene, with snow and cold and holly and ivy and so forth.  Even though snow was not a common occurrence in London, Dickens paints a picture that's all Currier & Ives.  Scrooge's memories of his childhood are all frost-tinged and icicle-laden.  Bing Crosby would have had no problem singing about Dickens' version of the holidays.

In other sections of A Christmas Carol, Dickens uses weather and setting to similar effect.  The Ghost of Christmas Present is surrounded by snow.  He and Scrooge plow through drifts as they navigate the streets of London.  The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is shrouded in fog and darkness.  Weather is as much a character of the story as Jacob Marley or Bob Cratchit.

I love rain storms.  This morning, it was pouring when I was getting ready for work.  In fact, the sky was streaked with light and thunder.  I almost didn't take a shower, but decided that hygiene was more important than safety.  On my drive to the office, the rain sounded like an army battalion marching on the roof of my car.  I don't know what the rain and lightning represent for my day.  I'm not expecting any sort of conflict or upheaval.  I'm not expecting any sort of cleansing or threshing of the fields of my life.  I just like rain.

I'm not sure what Dickens would make of my storm this morning, either.  I'm sure I could turn it into an ominous portent for the future, mental illness or financial instability.  I could also turn it into an omen of good fortune, weight loss or the Nobel Prize in Literature.  However, sometimes rain is just rain.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

Saint Marty's still holding out for the Nobel Prize.

This may mean a bad day

January 17: Cold, Snow, Darkness

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that the people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way.  The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.

Yes, this passage from the beginning of A Christmas Carol pretty much describes the morning.  The wind is blowing; snow is swooping in from Lake Superior; and the darkness is thick as cement.  I'm supposed to go for a walk with a coworker before work, and I'm not too sure about slogging through this weather.  I need the exercise, but it's going to be like Admiral Byrd reaching the South Pole.  Cold.  Snow. Darkness.

Chuck dreaming of a white Christmas

We've had a fairly mild winter in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  The stretch of bad weather this past week or so is the first we've had in a very long time.  According to everything I've read about weather in Charles Dickens' time, Dickens pretty much invented the white London Christmas.  In fact, Dickens single-handedly created much of the modern image of the holiday:  Christmas trees, goose and turkey, snow, ghost stories by a roaring fireplace, and snow everywhere.

January is a long, cold month for residents of the U.P.  It almost feels like one extended winter solstice.  I come to work in the dark.  I drive home in the dark.  However, I have noticed, in the last week or so, that the sky is not completely devoid of light on my 5 p.m. drive.  That warms my heart.

I'm not complaining about the weather this morning.  I live in the middle of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, surrounded by lakes.  I expect lake effect snow and wind and darkness this time of year.

Saint Marty just wishes he had a glass of hot chocolate, a roaring fire, and some chestnuts to roast (not to eat, just to roast).