Lacy Night

As rain shifts to snow, mushy morning rush is forecast — chicagotribune.com

Afternoon rains turned to snow Monday evening as a storm expected to bring around 6 inches of snow moved into the Chicago area.

It started snowing around 2pm today. In spite of grumbling about the cold and the piles of grey, frozen blocks of slush along the margins of the roads, I really love how pretty everything gets after a few hours of snow.

Big fat flakes came down as I drove home, and it was starting to “stick” on the parking lot and not melt away. A couple of hours later, we had more than 2 inches. And now we’ve got about 3 1/2 inches, just wet enough to stick to every little branch and twig, delineating every line of bark on the trees and covering the ugly half-melted dirty grey stuff with pretty, clean, fluffy snow.  So I pulled on a pair of winter shoes and walked around the block.

The trees looked like lace curtains, hanging in every direction as far as you could see.

Lovely. Just lovely. It made that nice crrrrunch-crrrrunch noise with every step, and occasionally when I walked over a shelf of ice on the sidewalks, it crackled and made a deeper KA-RONK! KA-RONK! noise.

One neighbor was out shoveling her drive on the other side of the block.
“Are we tired of the snow yet?”  I asked as I ka-ronked along.

“I like the snow,” she said with a smile as she cleared her drive old-school.

“I do, too.” Ka-ronk, ka-ronk, ka-ronk.

I’d told David to come after me if I wasn’t back in 10 minutes, and was a little worried that I’d get back to the house only to see his footprints following mine, but he was still watching an old “Enterprise” re-run (first season, Captain Archer was still a sunny optimist).  I got back in plenty of time, and before too many other neighbors decided to fire up their snowblowers and spoil the nice lacy night.

[tags]snow, ice, winter[/tags]

The Politics of Fear: Only 13 times? Isn’t it more?

Keith Olbermann makes it 13 times that the Bush administration used a suspiciously timed terror alert or arrest announcement to either negate unfavorable news, or neutralize positive news about political opponents.  Only thirteen times? But it’s linked at One Utah:

One Utah » Blog Archive » The Nexus of Politics and Terror (and Lying)

Bishop Paul Moore: His Faith and Secrets

Audio: Confessions: Online Only: The New Yorker

This week in the magazine, in an excerpt from her book “The Bishop’s Daughter,” Honor Moore writes about her father, the Episcopal bishop Paul Moore, his faith, and his secret. Here Moore talks about her father’s public service and private life.

As noted at Preludium and The Lead. Moore’s voice is warm and calm, except when she talks about her disappointment at not being able to discuss something she had in common with her father; her private life was more open, but he was a man of his generation, and not able to accept himself as he was… he was a man between worlds.

Bishop’s Palaces on the block in Britain

My friend Ellen’s husband runs a blog about archeology, and today it had an item about the Church of England’s current upheaval… no, not that upheaval, the one about the fancy bishop’s palaces going on the market because they’re perceived as an extravagance in an era when ordinary parish priests have trouble making ends meet.

Archaeology in Europe: 02/01/2008 – 03/01/2008

Resplendent with moats, gatehouses and banqueting halls, bishops’ palaces are among some of the grandest buildings in the country.Now, however, the historic homes, which have belonged to the Church of England for centuries, could be sold off in a bid to raise money for cash-strapped parishes.

A confidential internal review is examining whether the diocesan bishops’ houses, nine of which are palaces, are appropriate for the Church to keep. The bishops’ residences are worth about £120 million, but cost up to £9 million each year to maintain.

They are at the centre of a row between Church commissioners over whether it is justifiable to retain such opulent residences, which give the perception of bishops living in luxury while parish clergy struggle to make ends meet.

While the commissioners – who are responsible for overseeing the Church’s £4 billion of assets – are to look at all of the historic palaces over the next few years, they met last week to debate the future of Rose Castle, which has been home to the bishops of Carlisle since the 13th century and is estimated to be worth around £2 million.

The Bishop of Carlisle is NOT pleased at this development.