--- Over the Transom ---
Where’s Global Warming When You
Need It?
By Sandy Raschke
This is my first year living with
major snow. It’s December 23, about midway through a weeklong
succession of winter storms; there’s an accumulation of about
eight-ten inches of powdery snow on the ground, with more to
come. Daytime temperatures have remained below 20 for almost
two weeks now, with nights in the single digits. The snow won’t
be going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
Welcome my friends to the real
Central Oregon, where some of the locals recently told us, “Why,
this is just like the 50’s and 60’s, when we used to get five
feet of snow and temperatures below zero for most of the
winter.” And to think when my husband and I were researching
retirement places, we cast off the Bitterroot Valley of Montana
because the winters were too harsh. Hah!
It’s been an adventure just to go
grocery shopping. The public works department of the City of
Madras only uses their plows when the snow is at least six
inches deep; otherwise, they just toss out “cinder” or dirt on
the streets. And they have a weird way of disposing of snow:
they pile it up in the middle of the street. Wait until it
starts melting…a real mess I expect.
But, we don’t live in the City limits; the county is
supposed to plow the roads—and they haven’t, at least not in our
subdivision. So it was with great bemusement that we watched a
number of our neighbors attempt to turn off our road and into
their driveways after a long day of work: more than a few
spinning wheels and gnashing of teeth to welcome one home. I’m
glad we bought snow tires in October, as we never would have
gotten back up our driveway after returning from Safeway. We
had made a mad dash to the store in between storms so that I
could gather all the necessaries to prepare our Christmas feast,
but while I was inside shopping and my husband and Arnold the
German-wirehaired pointer waited in the car, it began snowing
hard again; by the time we got home, using four-wheel drive,
another inch had fallen. If my husband hadn’t cleared our long,
uphill driveway of snow during a break on Sunday, we would have
been in the same position as our neighbors.
Be prepared, we tell ourselves.
But we rarely are. I have a pantry full of canned goods, a
manual can opener and a kerosene-fueled camp stove, some
flashlights, big and small. We have a propane fireplace; if the
power goes out, we can use the battery starter, but the blower
fan won’t work on batteries. We found that out in the winter of
2006, when the power went out for six hours on an 8-degree day.
It’s amazing how cold it can get, even with more than a foot of
insulation in the walls, and bundled up in long underwear,
sweaters and jackets. Brr.
So, when I read of the powerful storms that have wracked
the top tier of our country, I can empathize. You poor folks
got our storms; much like catching a cold, they seem to be
infectious. But eventually the darkness of winter will end and
give way to the rebirth of spring—that’s the way I try see
things anyway—in an optimistic light, even as the snow turns to
a muddy slush.
This being the holiday season, I’d like to thank a few
people for their tireless work on behalf of this wonderful
little writers’ magazine, especially our webmaster, Ralph
Sabelhaus, for setting up the Calliope web version and
for listing us on several online resource sites. He has opened
Calliope to the world: we have been receiving
manuscripts from across the globe, and from new and experienced
home-grown writers, with all kinds of backgrounds that inform
their work. And I’d like to also thank Cynthia who writes the
wittiest columns and puts this magazine together, and to all our
guest columnists who have enlivened our pages with their often
humorous, and keen observations about the craft of writing.
To keep us focused on something
other than the economy, Calliope will be hosting
another fiction contest, the guidelines to be announced in the
Spring 2009 issue (with a deadline of September 30). No
decision yet on whether it will be a themed contest, or what the
entry fees will be; although, if you are a subscriber/member,
the first entry is always free.
And, as the sun finally breaks
through the clouds and I gaze out on the hills and a
picture-perfect “Currier and Ives” tableau, I’d like to wish
everyone a merry holiday season and a—
Happy New Year!
--Sandy