Active for next 2 days ·
National Weather Service
…WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 8 AM WEDNESDAY TO 8 AM EDT
THURSDAY…
Today is the Vernal Equinox – the first day of spring. It’s, currently 24º out and we’re due for another BIG storm which’ll, likely, islandize the Neck. AGAIN! Christ, the folks on the stretch of Sea Street, whose homes were way under the ocean's tumult, are still doing repairs and digging out. This just ain’t fair.All I want right now are buds on the trees, croci poking their sweet heads up above the still brown grass and tulips. DAMMIT that’s not so much to ask!
Grumble, grumble. grumble
In other news, I’ve found the, so far anyway, MOST fabulous app! Innocaption looks like it’s gonna solve my phone needs.
InnoCaption is a free mobile caption service for deaf and hard of hearing people or anyone with hearing loss that has trouble understanding speech on the phone.How’s it work?
In an InnoCaption call, the voice channel is used to carry your voice to the person on the other end; however, when the other person talks to you, their voice goes two places: it goes to your phone (audio), just like any phone call and to our Communication Assistant (CA), who is a live stenographer. The CA captions what is being said.
And those captions appear ON MY TINYPHONE SCREEN! (NO need for a landline!) How astoundingly cool is THAT? (hint: VERY!)
Innocaption’s only available in the U.S. so I won’t be chitchatting with Della (apart from text messaging) but that’s OK. I got this primarily so Daddy and I could schmooze AND so’s I could call 911 when/if needed.I’ve yet to try this out with Pop. He’s, sadly but thankfully, in hospital. His hurt arm is in fact broken. Today he’ll have a zillion and three tests and questions answered (is there internal bleeding? will surgery be required?). Depending on how long he’s in, I’ll either fly down to keep him company (and annoy him with my silliness – that’s one of my superpowers, ya know) or keep him up and jawing on the tinyphone into the wee, dark AM hours. I can do that now!
I heard back from one of the other companies who do this sort of thing and, hilariously, a rep. emailed back, enthusiastically instructing me to CALL them.
Ya know pal, I don’t subscribe to your service yet nor do I know how it even works plus I’M DEAF so, yeah, I won’t be dialing you up.
Sure, I could call them USING InnoCaption but then...redundant much?
It neverendingly astounds me when folks who routinely work with us deafies fail to understand the very simple basics of the sounds of silence.
The good news is, of course, there's no ice on the Arctic and temps hovering right at freezing - zero or thirty-two, which ever you prefer - are about fifty degrees above "normal". We've seen this in the icecores and seabed samples and know what comes next. It does not bode well for the North Atlantic states.
ReplyDeleteThe fun part for me, a Mad Scientist, is how we came to (sort of) figure it out, how what we've learned of the North Atlantic Conveyor stems from figuring out how the Grande Rhonde and Colombia River Gorge were formed, how over the course of a thousand years or so glaical ice dams up in Montana cut loose trillions of gallons of water that ran with such force it carved out mountains and tumbled house sized Montana boulders as far south as Eugene. Something similar seems to have happened at the St Lawrence seaway, at about the same time, with trillions of gallons of super dense cold glacial water dumping into the North Atlantic, collapsing the conveyor as well as the associated caribii "Gulf Stream" of temperate air that generally graces the N Atlantic coasts. The super dense cold waters flowing out from under the Greenland glaciers are having the same effect, and it could be argued "The Arctic" is relocating to N. Europe. It has happened before.
Oh, sorry, Hi! Good Morning! It'll be sixty degrees on the Oregon High Desert today, at four thousand feet above sea level just miles from what were once prolific glaciers close enough to the forty-fifth parallel to call it half way to the North Pole! We should be getting your snow, while you should be seeing cherry blossoms.
Cherry blossoms – sounds LOVELY!
DeleteI absolutely love reading about how the land came to be, how it was all formed. My brain was an utter conflagration after I read about Central Park's glacial history (and sitting on some of the massive boulders). Then Jen and I went to Iceland. Holy motherfucking WOW! Eurasian and North American tectonic plates? MONDO WILD!
"The super dense cold waters flowing out from under the Greenland glaciers are having the same effect, and it could be argued "The Arctic" is relocating to N. Europe."
Fascinating.
Geology – that shit sparks my bean something fierce.
I'm seriously envious of your 60º.
Iceland can be said to be the heart of the world, atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the seabed building mechanism driving the tectonic plates apart, from which literally the world as we know it has stemmed. I lived there for a bit, when quite young, and have viewed, laid hands upon, the glacial striations - the scratches - on those Central Park boulders.
DeleteOf all the subjects of which I have an interest, geology is my favorite.
You lived in Iceland or NYC? Either way WOW, envy! I’d love to ‘hear’ more if you’re into telling me a story or two 😁
DeleteIf I was to do something outside of the arts, it’d be geology and/or anthropology.
The Army, both counts. I was a bit of an Army brat when quite young, lived on a few NATO bases until I was about seven and my "father" abandoned us in San Fransisco, and I came back to Oregon. Later, when I was in the Army I was stationed in and out of Fort Dix for a total of about a year over a couple of years and visited Central Park several times to see some free music (early seventies, BB King stands out, and Bad Company's debut with guest Jimmy Page). Explored a bit, saw the striations but did not realize till perhaps twenty years later what they were. They're actually mentioned in probably every geology text published in the last twenty years.
ReplyDeleteYou were an Army brat, I was an academic brat -- my father on a near endless quest for more advanced degrees and the nearly elusive tenure track gig. You got to see/live in far more interesting places 🙂 In the early 70s we were in Bloomington, Indiana.
DeleteYour "father" ... we all have reasons and every story's complicated but.....BUT!
B.B. King and Jimmy Page? Oh, swoon!!!