WEATHER WITCH IS EDGY OVER OMENS...

It's been a cool and refreshing summer. Our valley has twice registered night temps in the 40s within the past week, and forecasters are predicting cool daytime highs for next week. This takes me back to July of 1993, when I recorded these words in my journal:

September has sneaked in early this year,
setting her cool hand upon the face of July,
chilling our nights
and veiling our daytime sunlight.
She has announced her premature presence
in unseasonal mist-laden mornings,
and heaped her marshmallow signature clouds
along our summer horizons.
She is etching fall colors ever-so-slightly
in the leaves of our summer-lush woodlands;
drenching our summery souls with bone-chilling rains;
and casting the shadows of autumn upon us.
She has sent us her message;
we have felt it and seen it and heard it.
Just so you know,
our winter may arrive upon us, cold and early.

--R.Moore, July 1993, "Observations of a Weather Witch"

Alas, that summer WAS followed by a cold and early winter. We awoke one morning to 38degrees below zero, beginning a long chain of days in which the temperatures did not rise above zero, day or night. The limbs of the trees were snapping and cracking and "barking," protesting the cold. As were we.

R.A.T. (Rose About Town) is sorry for worrying you; try not to think about it.

(Direct your comments to R.A.T. at randrmoore@gmail.com)

OLDER THAN LONDON'S BIG BEN

  London's famous Big Ben is now celebrating its 150th birthday. I thought it was much older, didn't you?

  Here in our younger country, in my own community of Concord Township in Lake County, Ohio, our Old Stone School is 16 years OLDER than Big Ben.

   It hasn't been a schoolhouse since 1921. But our community loved and respected it enough to refurbish it inside and out. It now lives again as a museum.

 

   R.A.T. (Rose About Town) is no longer young, though she's not as old as Big Ben or the Stone School. And she is glad that age is not necessarily a deterrent to respect.