Day 274, December 15, 2020

 Keeping Warm

Tonight's soundtrack: Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite, Paris, 2018

Now that winter has settled in, one of my chores is to light a fire in our small wood stove each night. It has become a part of my routine, like changing out of my work shirt. Earlier, I imagined that being home all day, that we would have the wood stove burning all day long, but with us both working in the bedrooms now, the heat from the wood stove wouldn't really reach back here, so instead we burn propane until the end of the workday, then I go out to the woodpile and I try to pick out a few pieces that are small enough that they will start easy, and I go build my fire.

I was never a Boy Scout, I think my father saw the organization as a paramilitary training front, but I've always felt like I had competent basic survival fire making skills. They evolved from the backyard barbecues complete with charcoal lighter fluid, newspaper, and my father's snorkel mask worn like a firefighter on Emergency! on TV in the 1970s, to family camping trips in Maine. I don't ever remember my father teaching me how to build a fire, just that I was comfortable doing so. When I went to college, part of my camping gear was a homemade fire can, where I punched holes in a soup can and tied it to a string. I'd fill it with tinder, and small pieces of kindling, then I'd light it and swing it around in a fast spin until it burst into flame and used that to start our campfire out off the Perimeter Trail somewhere. I'm not sure if it was more efficient than other ways of starting a fire, but it was more fun.

In college, I lived out at Maggie's house where I had a wood stove, and that winter I ushered in the routine of keeping a fire burning through the night and stoking it in the morning. I may still have a burn scar or two, from popping my wrist against the hot metal while dropping in a new log in that narrow and deep stove. 

In graduate school, when the twins were newborns, we lived out in Shutesbury and weathered a big snowstorm that had us homebound for a week without electricity. Our wood stove was our saving grace for heat, for melting snow, and for cooking. From then on, I vowed to never live in a home without a wood stove to fall back on.

These days, I save the choice pieces of cardboard from packages and thumbed through issues of the Montague Reporter, sometimes sticky with maple syrup. Sometimes there's a cardboard egg carton (the girls have stopped laying in protest of the cold), and then I'll sweep up some of the detritus from the previous evening's wood haul, and add that to the kindling. Some weekend soon, I might take the axe out and cut up some new kindling, we've already burned up the scraps of bark and splinters left after stacking the two cords. 

There is something about the heat from a wood stove that has been warming the room for a few hours. Standing next to the stove after taking the dog out, you can feel the heat penetrate into your body. It is like a deep embrace. It is like sleeping in on the weekend. It is like a lazy afternoon reading books and falling into a sleepy stupor. It is like drinking real hot chocolate. 

All truth be told, our winter has been mild so far, and can hardly be called winter at all yet (knock on wood), though a storm is around the corner and may give us a white Christmas. We had a few rain storms that knocked out power and tipped over some of the trees between our house and our neighbors, but they were already dead and strung with vines, so they kind of dangle now in suspended repose. I've picked up most of the branches from the last storm, and this morning I rearranged the shed, moving the lawmmower to the back, and putting the snowblower by the door. I filled it up with gasoline, emptying the can. I have to remember to fill it the next time I'm out. So, I guess we are ready for the snow. 

Take care and be well,

Leo

From Our Friends:

From the Online Learning Consortium:

What We're Reading and Listening to This Week

• Book: Geeky Pedagogy, by Jessamyn Neuhaus. A guide for intellectuals, introverts, and nerds who want to be effective teachers.
• Book: Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity.
• Book: My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, by Resmaa Menakem. An alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.
• TOPcast: The Teaching Online Podcasthosted by Dr. Thomas Cavanagh and Dr. Kelvin Thompson, is a monthly podcast for online and blended learning professionals conducted over a shared cup of coffee.
• Podcast: Check the O.L.: Liner Notes from Groundbreaking Online Learning. Join Terry Greene and Anne-Marie Scott in this podcast series as they get the stories behind how some of the most groundbreaking online learning of all time came to be.

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HIDDEN FIGURES: ROMANTIC

HIDDEN FIGURES: ROMANTIC Sun 12/20 • 4PM $15  Adeline Mueller wraps up our series by sharing more about the incredible women who shaped Western music in the 19th century, from famous composers like Clara Schumann to lesser-known figures like Hawai’i’s last monarch, Queen Lili'uokalani. More information and tickets at www.pvsoc.org/events