This week, just before the Thanksgiving holiday, I learned that the company which had been my largest customer this fall had filed for bankruptcy and closed their doors. They were a wholesaler/distributor and the Christmas orders from retailers never came this year. Oh, I'm sure they had some but sales were so low compared to previous years they simply could not stay in business. The newly unemployed former IT Director, my main contact there, gave me the courtesy of a call to let me know. He's in his upper fifties. His job is not going to be easy to replace, especially in this economy.
As frustrated as I am at times with the direction I see things moving in I know that they could be much worse. I, at least, still have some customers and some income. The lights are on, the heat is running when needed, and I know when my next checks should arrive. My income isn't what it should be, but considering how many people are unemployed, some for a very long time, I'm fortunate by comparison.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
CD Review: Bill Quist - Piano Solos of Erik Satie
I think about three years have passed since I posted a review of a CD from my collection to my blog, and I don't think I've ever taken the time to review one of the classical albums I occasionally enjoy. Before returning to politics and news and other weighty matters I thought it might be nice to write about a CD I really like.
More than 30 years after it's initial release, this recording still stands up as my favorite of Erik Satie's piano works. Recorded in a studio rather than a concert hall, it has a rich and full sound and the works are performed beautifully. Windham Hill wasn't known as a classical label. This may be their only true classical release but it is an outstanding one. Brian Eno refers to Satie as the father of ambient music. That may fit for some of the pieces but I sure wouldn't want to try to nod off to Bill Quist's forceful perfomance of Ogives #1. Some of Satie's compositions selected here are delicate and beautiful, of course. In general, this is an excellent selection of his short piano works performed by a pianist associated with the San Francisco Symphony.
I should note that this album has been out of print for years. Used copies are usually available from Amazon.com and other websites which carry used CDs. Highly recommended.
NOTE: The main part of this review has also been posted on Discogs.
I should note that this album has been out of print for years. Used copies are usually available from Amazon.com and other websites which carry used CDs. Highly recommended.
NOTE: The main part of this review has also been posted on Discogs.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
It's all President Obama's Fault
Every day I see and read another right-wing opinion piece telling us how President Obama and an intrusive government are the cause of all our economic woes. Tea Party pundits and libertarian true believers seem to dominate the media, the Internet and the discussion despite their endless complaints about the "liberal bias" in anything that doesn't parrot their views. Living in a conservative state like North Carolina these views are now the real mainstream. My brother, who lives near Atlanta, made a comment that fits my feelings about my adopted home: "I used to be a conservative Republican until I moved to Georgia. Then I became a liberal Democrat... and my views didn't change." What was once conservative, or perhaps still is in New York where I cast my first ballot, is called liberal here.
Sorry, I don't see the government as more intrusive now than it was 30 years ago no matter how many right wingers say otherwise. We don't have a nanny state, though if social conservatives take power we might have government policing our bedrooms. We don't have too much government regulation. We have too little. Corporate greed rides rough shod over realistic planning for our future and for a sustainable economy rather than the quick buck. The right wingers who claim to be saving us all from an overbearing government that will tax us to death are ready to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, effectively handing granny a tin cup for her retirement, while refusing to cut one penny from corporate welfare (pardon me, subsidies) for big oil companies making record profits.
2011 resembles 1937. The Republicans were decimated in the 1932 election and we had one party rule for the next four years. With New Deal programs and the government building infrastructure FDR managed to cut unemployment from more than 25% in 1933 to 12% by 1936. That was still too high and people were suffering but the economy was in recovery. By 1937 the Supreme Court had thrown out some New Deal programs. A new Conservative Coalition in Congress called for fiscal restraint and deficit reduction. The economy went straight back into full blown depression and didn't recover until World War II.
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. --George Santayana
I believe in times of economic crisis, and that is where we are now, an activist government is a necessity. Yes, debts and deficits are a problem and they should be addressed. Start by ending what caused the deficits in the first place: unnecessary wars coupled with ill timed massive tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy. In wartime past Presidents have called on Americans to sacrifice. Neither President Bush nor President Obama has done so. Neither of them put this country on a wartime footing. The Bush tax cuts cost $4 trillion over 10 years, or roughly one third of our current deficit. Let the tax cuts expire next year, end the useless wars which we cannot possibly win and the deficit wouldn't look so daunting after all.
Make no mistake, President Bush and the policies of the right caused the current crisis. President Obama, through lack of leadership and a negotiating style that gives away the store before he even begins, has continued those policies and given as a Republican-light agenda that perpetuates the problems.
I am not a fan of President Obama. I'd gladly vote for someone else who would be an improvement. The current crop of Republican candidates is so extreme, so incredibly far to the right, that any of them would make things far, far worse. Unless President Obama faces a primary challenge or a strong independent with sane policies emerges I will have to hold my nose and while I vote to reelect him. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it?
Oh, and before the usual people simply write me off as some crazy liberal I will remind people that once upon a time I was a Reagan Republican. To paraphrase: I used to be a conservative Republican until I moved to North Carolina. Then I became a liberal Democrat. OK, my views on economics have moved to the left, but not by as much as you might think. As President Obama pointed out, President Reagan did take a balanced approach to deficit reduction. All too often President Obama's positions are far closer to those Ronald Reagan took than those of the Tea Party faithful who now effectively dominate the Republican Party.
Those who say it's all President Obama's fault want to take the policies that brought us to a crisis in the first place and put them on steroids. President Bush and a much more moderate Republican party gave us the Great Recession and record deficits. Those who ignore that bit of recent history don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past. They want to amplify them. Between TARP, bailouts, the stimulus package, new fiscal regulations and all the other policies they vilify we avoided a Second Great Depression. Yet on Fox News and on right wing and social media websites black is now white and white is now black. Those policies that saved our economy from going off a cliff are now the problem. Indeed, as the recent clamor on the right to not raise the debt ceiling amply demonstrated, they are more than happy to throw us all off that cliff.... and it will all be President Obama's fault.
Sorry, I don't see the government as more intrusive now than it was 30 years ago no matter how many right wingers say otherwise. We don't have a nanny state, though if social conservatives take power we might have government policing our bedrooms. We don't have too much government regulation. We have too little. Corporate greed rides rough shod over realistic planning for our future and for a sustainable economy rather than the quick buck. The right wingers who claim to be saving us all from an overbearing government that will tax us to death are ready to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, effectively handing granny a tin cup for her retirement, while refusing to cut one penny from corporate welfare (pardon me, subsidies) for big oil companies making record profits.
2011 resembles 1937. The Republicans were decimated in the 1932 election and we had one party rule for the next four years. With New Deal programs and the government building infrastructure FDR managed to cut unemployment from more than 25% in 1933 to 12% by 1936. That was still too high and people were suffering but the economy was in recovery. By 1937 the Supreme Court had thrown out some New Deal programs. A new Conservative Coalition in Congress called for fiscal restraint and deficit reduction. The economy went straight back into full blown depression and didn't recover until World War II.
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. --George Santayana
I believe in times of economic crisis, and that is where we are now, an activist government is a necessity. Yes, debts and deficits are a problem and they should be addressed. Start by ending what caused the deficits in the first place: unnecessary wars coupled with ill timed massive tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy. In wartime past Presidents have called on Americans to sacrifice. Neither President Bush nor President Obama has done so. Neither of them put this country on a wartime footing. The Bush tax cuts cost $4 trillion over 10 years, or roughly one third of our current deficit. Let the tax cuts expire next year, end the useless wars which we cannot possibly win and the deficit wouldn't look so daunting after all.
Make no mistake, President Bush and the policies of the right caused the current crisis. President Obama, through lack of leadership and a negotiating style that gives away the store before he even begins, has continued those policies and given as a Republican-light agenda that perpetuates the problems.
I am not a fan of President Obama. I'd gladly vote for someone else who would be an improvement. The current crop of Republican candidates is so extreme, so incredibly far to the right, that any of them would make things far, far worse. Unless President Obama faces a primary challenge or a strong independent with sane policies emerges I will have to hold my nose and while I vote to reelect him. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it?
Oh, and before the usual people simply write me off as some crazy liberal I will remind people that once upon a time I was a Reagan Republican. To paraphrase: I used to be a conservative Republican until I moved to North Carolina. Then I became a liberal Democrat. OK, my views on economics have moved to the left, but not by as much as you might think. As President Obama pointed out, President Reagan did take a balanced approach to deficit reduction. All too often President Obama's positions are far closer to those Ronald Reagan took than those of the Tea Party faithful who now effectively dominate the Republican Party.
Those who say it's all President Obama's fault want to take the policies that brought us to a crisis in the first place and put them on steroids. President Bush and a much more moderate Republican party gave us the Great Recession and record deficits. Those who ignore that bit of recent history don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past. They want to amplify them. Between TARP, bailouts, the stimulus package, new fiscal regulations and all the other policies they vilify we avoided a Second Great Depression. Yet on Fox News and on right wing and social media websites black is now white and white is now black. Those policies that saved our economy from going off a cliff are now the problem. Indeed, as the recent clamor on the right to not raise the debt ceiling amply demonstrated, they are more than happy to throw us all off that cliff.... and it will all be President Obama's fault.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
It's Time For the Linux Community to Rally Around One of Our Own
As some of you have undoubtedly seen, I published a piece this morning on O'Reilly Broadcast about the unfortunate situation Ken Starks and Diane Franklin of the Helios Project find themselves in. Diane had a stroke, the main arteries which deliver blood to her brain are largely blocked, and she needs surgery which may very well be the difference between life and death. If you haven't already please follow the link and read the piece I wrote.
Anyway, I wanted to write about it again, this time from a more personal perspective. This post is unusually long, even for me, and I have been known to get long winded now and again. Please bear with me and read it through.
Diane, Ken's partner, is 64, retired, and living on Social Security alone. She isn't eligible for Medicare yet and her puny $1,200 per month income is too much for her to qualify for Medicaid in the great state of Texas. Diane has worked as the Helios Project's Logistics and Planning Director for the past year without renumeration. She gave her time freely to help underprivileged kids. As is all too often the case in our great American society, no good deed goes unpunished.
As you might guess she can barely make ends meet at all on that income and she surely cannot afford health insurance. I know what health insurance costs for single coverage for a woman in her 50s very well, since that is my situation. It's prohibitively expensive. I can only imagine what it would cost for a woman of 64. I'll save the obvious political rant for later. I don't want politics to distract from what is at stake here.
I've never met Diane or Ken. Heck, I spoke to Ken for the very first time on the phone last night. My own history with Ken, as some of you may remember, got off to an inauspicious start. To say he rubbed me the wrong way would be an understatement and a half. For those who may have missed the little incident from 2008 let me tell you about it.
Ken was deeply involved in something called Lindependence. Part of the idea was to get an entire town to switch from Windows to Linux. OK, it was a small town in California, but still, getting an entire town to agree on anything takes some doing. Ken's style back then was confrontational. Heck, he even blogged about a physical confrontation he got into later over his Linux advocacy, but that's besides the point. Anyway, I was writing for O'Reilly quite a bit back then and Ken wanted publicity. He e-mailed me.
Ken is, to say the least, very passionate about Linux. I read his website, his blog, his comparison of running Windows to a "ball and chain" and found it full of zealotry and way, way , way over the top. I wrote a very formal, business like response to "Mr. Starks" declining to cover his story. I wasn't alone. Most of the tech press had pretty much decided to ignore him en masse. Well, my e-mail rubbed Ken the wrong way every bit as much as his writing had done to me. I was the blogger Ken called a "coward" in this 2008 post from his blog.
I have no idea if my e-mail had an impact or not. I don't know if others found a more effective way to critique his work. I do know that Ken's once overly long, wordy and sometimes difficult to follow prose became crisper and more precise. The confrontational attitude slowly disappeared. Thankfully the passion never dissipated and Ken became a very, very effective advocate for Linux.
His Helios Project, which recycles old computers for kids who otherwise cannot afford them and successfully solicits fund to make sure these kids get Internet connectivity to go with it undoubtedly helped. The mellower Ken won awards for his public service and earned praise for his selfless and, I should add, full-time efforts to help those in need in his community. Ken also does some Linux consulting work but, based on what I've read, his income is scarcely better than Diane's. Neither of them can afford much. Their reward comes in what they do for others. Oh, and yeah, somewhere along the line I earned Ken's respect as well, as evidenced by this 2010 blog post.
In contrast to Ken's very public persona, both as a Linux advocate and community activist, is Diane's very much behind the scenes contribution. Ken described her work in the Helios Project to me as "critical." From what I gather she has made serious improvements in the gathering and allocation of resources, making the Project all the more effective. Now the Project is on hold as Ken scrambles to find help for Diane.
In a few short years Ken Starks has become one of the best advocates for Linux I know of. There was a time I never imagined I would say such a thing. Now it simply is true. His work for the less fortunate people of his Austin, Texas community is a great example of one of what the first President Bush called "a thousand points of light." Let's make sure that light is neither dimmed nor extinguished. All of us in the Linux community need to gather around and help a little.
There are tens of millions of Linux users around the world. If 10,000 of us gave just $10 to fund Diane's surgery it would be paid for. It really doesn't take much. The Linux community, the public, non-corporate face of who we are, will be well served in Ken and Diane can get back to doing what they love to do.
Ken has setup a PayPal account to allow those who would like to contribute to do so. Contributions should be made to dianekfranklin@hotmail.com. For those without a credit/debit card or a PayPal account contributions can be sent to the address found here. I run a small consulting business that recently lost it's largest customer. Add some slow payers and I am not exactly having an easy time of it right now. Despite that, I am expecting some checks to come in this week and I will do my small part. I am asking you to do the same.
There is one other thing I am going to ask: the major Linux portal sites are not covering this story. One has a prohibition against fund raising. I don't know what excuse the others have. This needs to be a grass roots effort within the community to get the word out. If you have a blog, a Facebook page, anything at all related to Linux or helping needy kids or whatever then, please, share Ken and Diane's story. It can still have a happy ending.
Anyway, I wanted to write about it again, this time from a more personal perspective. This post is unusually long, even for me, and I have been known to get long winded now and again. Please bear with me and read it through.
Diane, Ken's partner, is 64, retired, and living on Social Security alone. She isn't eligible for Medicare yet and her puny $1,200 per month income is too much for her to qualify for Medicaid in the great state of Texas. Diane has worked as the Helios Project's Logistics and Planning Director for the past year without renumeration. She gave her time freely to help underprivileged kids. As is all too often the case in our great American society, no good deed goes unpunished.
As you might guess she can barely make ends meet at all on that income and she surely cannot afford health insurance. I know what health insurance costs for single coverage for a woman in her 50s very well, since that is my situation. It's prohibitively expensive. I can only imagine what it would cost for a woman of 64. I'll save the obvious political rant for later. I don't want politics to distract from what is at stake here.
I've never met Diane or Ken. Heck, I spoke to Ken for the very first time on the phone last night. My own history with Ken, as some of you may remember, got off to an inauspicious start. To say he rubbed me the wrong way would be an understatement and a half. For those who may have missed the little incident from 2008 let me tell you about it.
Ken was deeply involved in something called Lindependence. Part of the idea was to get an entire town to switch from Windows to Linux. OK, it was a small town in California, but still, getting an entire town to agree on anything takes some doing. Ken's style back then was confrontational. Heck, he even blogged about a physical confrontation he got into later over his Linux advocacy, but that's besides the point. Anyway, I was writing for O'Reilly quite a bit back then and Ken wanted publicity. He e-mailed me.
Ken is, to say the least, very passionate about Linux. I read his website, his blog, his comparison of running Windows to a "ball and chain" and found it full of zealotry and way, way , way over the top. I wrote a very formal, business like response to "Mr. Starks" declining to cover his story. I wasn't alone. Most of the tech press had pretty much decided to ignore him en masse. Well, my e-mail rubbed Ken the wrong way every bit as much as his writing had done to me. I was the blogger Ken called a "coward" in this 2008 post from his blog.
I have no idea if my e-mail had an impact or not. I don't know if others found a more effective way to critique his work. I do know that Ken's once overly long, wordy and sometimes difficult to follow prose became crisper and more precise. The confrontational attitude slowly disappeared. Thankfully the passion never dissipated and Ken became a very, very effective advocate for Linux.
His Helios Project, which recycles old computers for kids who otherwise cannot afford them and successfully solicits fund to make sure these kids get Internet connectivity to go with it undoubtedly helped. The mellower Ken won awards for his public service and earned praise for his selfless and, I should add, full-time efforts to help those in need in his community. Ken also does some Linux consulting work but, based on what I've read, his income is scarcely better than Diane's. Neither of them can afford much. Their reward comes in what they do for others. Oh, and yeah, somewhere along the line I earned Ken's respect as well, as evidenced by this 2010 blog post.
In contrast to Ken's very public persona, both as a Linux advocate and community activist, is Diane's very much behind the scenes contribution. Ken described her work in the Helios Project to me as "critical." From what I gather she has made serious improvements in the gathering and allocation of resources, making the Project all the more effective. Now the Project is on hold as Ken scrambles to find help for Diane.
In a few short years Ken Starks has become one of the best advocates for Linux I know of. There was a time I never imagined I would say such a thing. Now it simply is true. His work for the less fortunate people of his Austin, Texas community is a great example of one of what the first President Bush called "a thousand points of light." Let's make sure that light is neither dimmed nor extinguished. All of us in the Linux community need to gather around and help a little.
There are tens of millions of Linux users around the world. If 10,000 of us gave just $10 to fund Diane's surgery it would be paid for. It really doesn't take much. The Linux community, the public, non-corporate face of who we are, will be well served in Ken and Diane can get back to doing what they love to do.
Ken has setup a PayPal account to allow those who would like to contribute to do so. Contributions should be made to dianekfranklin@hotmail.com. For those without a credit/debit card or a PayPal account contributions can be sent to the address found here. I run a small consulting business that recently lost it's largest customer. Add some slow payers and I am not exactly having an easy time of it right now. Despite that, I am expecting some checks to come in this week and I will do my small part. I am asking you to do the same.
There is one other thing I am going to ask: the major Linux portal sites are not covering this story. One has a prohibition against fund raising. I don't know what excuse the others have. This needs to be a grass roots effort within the community to get the word out. If you have a blog, a Facebook page, anything at all related to Linux or helping needy kids or whatever then, please, share Ken and Diane's story. It can still have a happy ending.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
How To Reduce the Federal Budget Deficit: It's Not Rocket Science
When you look at polling most Americans want spending cuts to reduce the deficit, but when you get to the actual spending items most Americans do NOT want to see cuts to Medicare, Social Security, education, or fighting terrorism. Without radically cutting those items you can never meaningfully reduce the deficit without raising taxes.
We had a balanced budget in 2000. Four things moved us from balance to record deficits:
When I talk about the wars, I would argue that we have won absolutely nothing in Iraq, where violence is on the rise and most Iraqis see America as the enemy. We also can't win anything in Afghanistan. It's time to get out of both places expeditiously. This is one area where Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is right. We also need to look at how valuable other overseas troop deployments are and how many are cold war relics.
I like lower taxes as much as anyone, but... eliminating the Bush tax cuts for everyone slashes $4 trillion from the deficit and would have the largest impact in terms of getting our financial house in order.
We had a balanced budget in 2000. Four things moved us from balance to record deficits:
- The Bush tax cuts
- Unfunded wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) paid for through supplemental spending bills, not included in the regular budget process by the Bush administration
- The Medicaire prescription drug benefit
- A deep recession
When I talk about the wars, I would argue that we have won absolutely nothing in Iraq, where violence is on the rise and most Iraqis see America as the enemy. We also can't win anything in Afghanistan. It's time to get out of both places expeditiously. This is one area where Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is right. We also need to look at how valuable other overseas troop deployments are and how many are cold war relics.
I like lower taxes as much as anyone, but... eliminating the Bush tax cuts for everyone slashes $4 trillion from the deficit and would have the largest impact in terms of getting our financial house in order.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Storm Damage
First, I'd like to say that my heart goes out to all those who have suffered from what Gwen Ifill referred to last night on the PBS Newshour as the "plague of tornadoes" which have struck the midwest and the southeastern United States this spring. My deepest condolences to those who have lost loved ones. I also hope that those who have been hurt or who have lost their homes can recover quickly.
The city of Raleigh, North Carolina, where I live, was hit with a record breaking cluster of tornadoes on April 16. Here is some video of the damage on South Saunders St., maybe 10-15 minutes from here by car. Areas all around my neighborhood had severe damage but not much happened right where I live. OK, a tree outside my (home) office window came down and an awning downstairs was damaged, but all in all we were spared.
I wasn't quite so fortunate less than two weeks earlier on April 4. Shortly before 4:00 that morning a severe thunderstorm came through. Lightning struck a tree directly behind my building. The old oak came down, partially on my roof, and partly through my roof, through my attic and through the ceiling into the kitchen. This photo doesn't really show how large that hole was or how bad the damage really was. What you do see is the sky from what used to be my kitchen.
A few hours later water was coming in all across the back of my apartment. The place was uninhabitable.
I've got to give tremendous credit to my landlord. He owns a lot of rental units and found three for me to look at that morning. I picked one that I liked and with the help of three of his maintenance crew I was moved out by late afternoon and into the new place. My personal property loss was pretty minimal. Nobody was hurt. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse.
It took me maybe a month to get my life back to normal between the storm damage and other things that were happening at the time. Looking at what has happened in Joplin, Missouri and other cities and towns in recent days makes me realize how fortunate I am. It also makes me realize just how close I've been to being among those who really suffered this spring.
The city of Raleigh, North Carolina, where I live, was hit with a record breaking cluster of tornadoes on April 16. Here is some video of the damage on South Saunders St., maybe 10-15 minutes from here by car. Areas all around my neighborhood had severe damage but not much happened right where I live. OK, a tree outside my (home) office window came down and an awning downstairs was damaged, but all in all we were spared.
I wasn't quite so fortunate less than two weeks earlier on April 4. Shortly before 4:00 that morning a severe thunderstorm came through. Lightning struck a tree directly behind my building. The old oak came down, partially on my roof, and partly through my roof, through my attic and through the ceiling into the kitchen. This photo doesn't really show how large that hole was or how bad the damage really was. What you do see is the sky from what used to be my kitchen.
A few hours later water was coming in all across the back of my apartment. The place was uninhabitable.
I've got to give tremendous credit to my landlord. He owns a lot of rental units and found three for me to look at that morning. I picked one that I liked and with the help of three of his maintenance crew I was moved out by late afternoon and into the new place. My personal property loss was pretty minimal. Nobody was hurt. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse.
It took me maybe a month to get my life back to normal between the storm damage and other things that were happening at the time. Looking at what has happened in Joplin, Missouri and other cities and towns in recent days makes me realize how fortunate I am. It also makes me realize just how close I've been to being among those who really suffered this spring.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
We had a White Hanukkah and a White Christmas
Hanukkah was in early December this year and we had an inch and a half of snow on that Saturday. What was unusual was that it stayed cold and the snow stuck around for a week. That just doesn't happen in the Piedmont of North Carolina in a normal winter. Anyway, we had a white Hanukkah which was kind of nice. In typical Southern style an even smaller snowfall (0.8", 2 cm) meant no mail delivery due to icy roads on a Thursday 11 days later. It doesn't take much to shut things down here.
Well... we all know that Christmas is a much bigger deal for a lot more people than Hanukkah is in the United States, and that is especially true here in the South. The last time it showed on Christmas was 1947. Raleigh had 0.4" (1 cm) of accumulation before midnight last night so it was officially a white Christmas. Of course, the snow didn't stop at midnight...
As of an hour ago we had 8" (20.3 cm) of snow with another inch or two possible by midnight tonight. Raleigh (RDU airport), last I heard, had 6.5" (16.5 cm). A little to our north and east heading up towards Roanoke Rapids they already have 15" (38 cm) and snow is still falling. That's a big deal around here and the whole state of North Carolina is under a state of emergency. It's below freezing so we are also under a black ice advisory for tonight and tomorrow.
Much to my amazement the road I live on has already been ploughed. They usually clear the main roads around here on the first day but a little one like mine usually takes a day or two more if things don't melt away. So... despite the icy conditions as things refreeze and state government asking people to please stay home cars are flying up and down my street. Idiots! I hope the accidents they cause don't block my road tomorrow. There is only one road out of the community I live in.
I shoveled a path out to the street from the front door. I also cleared the area in front of the garage where the snow piled up just in case. I don't have to go anywhere tonight so I am staying home. I'll make a nice dinner and give the ferrets a good, long playtime. There is nothing so important that compels me to go out and drive on black ice.
My best friend is up north with her family and she insists she is still driving home on Tuesday. Somehow I don't think so. The area she's in is supposed to get 15-20" (38-51 cm) of snow tomorrow. Sure, the interstates will likely be cleared by Tuesday but the roads to and from are another matter. There won't be much melting by Tuesday anywhere between here and there. The forecast is for more cold weather with a warm up starting on Wednesday.
Anyway, I hope those who enjoy a white Christmas are happy. I hope everyone is having a great holiday season, whichever holiday(s) you choose to celebrate.
Well... we all know that Christmas is a much bigger deal for a lot more people than Hanukkah is in the United States, and that is especially true here in the South. The last time it showed on Christmas was 1947. Raleigh had 0.4" (1 cm) of accumulation before midnight last night so it was officially a white Christmas. Of course, the snow didn't stop at midnight...
As of an hour ago we had 8" (20.3 cm) of snow with another inch or two possible by midnight tonight. Raleigh (RDU airport), last I heard, had 6.5" (16.5 cm). A little to our north and east heading up towards Roanoke Rapids they already have 15" (38 cm) and snow is still falling. That's a big deal around here and the whole state of North Carolina is under a state of emergency. It's below freezing so we are also under a black ice advisory for tonight and tomorrow.
Much to my amazement the road I live on has already been ploughed. They usually clear the main roads around here on the first day but a little one like mine usually takes a day or two more if things don't melt away. So... despite the icy conditions as things refreeze and state government asking people to please stay home cars are flying up and down my street. Idiots! I hope the accidents they cause don't block my road tomorrow. There is only one road out of the community I live in. 
I shoveled a path out to the street from the front door. I also cleared the area in front of the garage where the snow piled up just in case. I don't have to go anywhere tonight so I am staying home. I'll make a nice dinner and give the ferrets a good, long playtime. There is nothing so important that compels me to go out and drive on black ice.
My best friend is up north with her family and she insists she is still driving home on Tuesday. Somehow I don't think so. The area she's in is supposed to get 15-20" (38-51 cm) of snow tomorrow. Sure, the interstates will likely be cleared by Tuesday but the roads to and from are another matter. There won't be much melting by Tuesday anywhere between here and there. The forecast is for more cold weather with a warm up starting on Wednesday.Anyway, I hope those who enjoy a white Christmas are happy. I hope everyone is having a great holiday season, whichever holiday(s) you choose to celebrate.
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