Hello, 2013.

12-31-12 VERMONT: It’s another overcast day. The sky was clear last night, giving us a lot of moonlight, but it looks like more snow now. We did another snowshoe trek around the pasture with the dogs. Yesterday’s wind as created snowdrifts on all the downwind slopes that are quite deep.

It has been a succession of dinners out for us. We been at Ken and Jane’s, Steve and Diana’s, Donna and Bruce’s and tonight we do New Years Eve at Stone Soup, maybe we’ll be awake at twelve, but probably not.

Happy, Happy everyone.


Have a seat!

More Snow, More Geology.

12-29-12 VERMONT: More snow today, at least six inches since mid-morning, with a few hours to go. It’s in the low twenties, but there’s no wind, so today’s snowshoeing was comfortable. Everything is white, and the snow is piled up on every surface.


Snowy Woods.

Whiteout-another six inches, so far.

Back to the pond ice—notice in yesterday’s pix the close up of the uplifted part of the ‘island’ that there is a crack through the middle perpendicular to the edge. When that small section of ice was bowed upwards it cracked because it can’t stretch or bend.

Now, if you will, think of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, actually paired ocean-bottom mountain ranges located mid way between the Americas and Europe and Africa, extending almost from one pole to the other. The ridges are sliced by transform faults that cross the ridges at right angles to the segment of the ridge they intersect. [Wikipedia has nice articles on both the ridges and transform faults, and Google Earth shows them both.] If you visualize the ridges from the side running from pole to pole, it is obviously a long arc, not a flat line as it might seem when looking downwards at it, because the earth is a sphere. As the ridges are pushed upward and away from each other by the magma upwelling between the two ridges, the ridges, being solidified rock, are unable to stretch under this upward force and crack, forming the transform faults. As the ocean bottom is carried away from the spreading center these cracks are propagated and lengthened and extended. The ice demonstrates a mini-example of the formation of a transform fault.

Pond Tectonics.

12-28-12 VERMONT: The neighbors arrived yesterday morning to clear the pond again, but were confronted by eight inches of snow, a much more formidable job than the previous day’s work of three inches. We all decided that it would be easier not to clear the entire pond but create a track around the outside by shoveling some snow inwards and some outwards, leaving a mound in the middle and a track around the mound. They had drilled into the ice a few days before this and the thickness was three inches which is OK, but not optimal for a lot of activity.

When they were almost finished, the weight of the snow mountain in the center caused the ice around it to crack, leaving a central ‘island’ which partially sank on one side. Six cracks spread radially outward from the island quite symmetrically. Everyone fled the ice.

Greenish pond water overspread the half of the island that was depressed until it reached its buoyancy point. One small section of the island, that was not awash, actually popped upward along the fracture line and then cracked perpendicularly to the fracture.


The weight of the piled snow in the center of the pond caused a central island to crack and detach from the ice plate and send out radial fractures.


The far side of the central island sank because of its weight allowing the greenish pond water to flood onto the surface soaking and melting some of the snow mound. It stopped sinking when the buoyancy point was reached. On the near side of the island, a small segment of the ice was uplifted has a crack perpendicular to the uplifted margin.

Close up photo of the uplifted segment, with a 'transform fault'.

I couldn’t help but think of analogies to Plate Tectonics. The first one that came to mind was the depression of continental plates by glacial ice allowing the ocean to flood the land. An example of this happening occurred during the melt down after the recent ice age. Huge lakes formed as ice melted but the water remained trapped behind dams of ice and morainal debris. One such lake was Lake Vermont filling the present Lake Champlain and much more of western Vermont. When the dam broke, the fresh, melt water from the lake drained out the present St. Lawrence valley, but because the weight of the ice had depressed the continental plate, which rebounds very slowly, the ocean water back filled the valley creating the Champlain Sea. Whale fossils have been found in the present Lake Champlain region. When the continental plate did ultimately rebound, the sea water drained and was replaced by fresh melt water.

More examples after I do a bit of research.

Looking Just Like Winter.

12-27-12 VERMONT: We arrived long before the storm did. The snow didn’t start until late at night. When we arrived, I shoveled the deck and steps, filled the feeders and watched Diana, Eliza and Clara clear the pond for skating. The pond had about three inches of old snow, as did the deck, and after about an hour, both were clear.

This morning everything has about six inches of new snow with more every second. It’s in the thirties and there’s almost no wind, so we’ll snowshoe around the pasture to get the dogs aired out later.

The chickadees and nuthatches are working the feeders. Yesterday when I went to fill the feeders, I found that a red squirrel had eaten through the plastic cover of the feed bucket and eaten the top two inches of the sunflower seeds, of course leaving all the empty husks. The squirrel was still in the garage jumping around up above the rafters and complaining about the invasion of his [her?] space. All the fussing attracted the dogs who ran around the garage floor barking and chasing the squirrel up above. None of them got anything out of the exercise, except exercise.


Eliza and Clara moving snow.

The pond is hockey rink sized, and almost clear.

Oops, not clear. The great thing about shoveling snow is that you get to have all that fun all over again almost every day.

Xmasopalooza

12-25-12 SHORT HILLS: Judy did it again, another Xmasopalooza, last night. The crowd was delighted and thrilled as usual with the hors d’oeuvres, entrees and sweets. They were mostly oiled up to start which helped with the successful reception of the offerings. Much Prosecco was imbibed. In attendance—Bette, Lonnie, Bill, Lynn, Robbie, Chrissie, Alison, Dan and later Alan and part of his family dropped in. There was a bit of snow during the evening.

We all got a late start this morning, but rallied in time to get out for ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ which everybody liked. Vermont tomorrow before the next storm.

Morning After.

Santa and the Mayans.

12-21-12 SHORT HILLS: There’s been a lot of rain this week, with more last night as a fast moving storm soaked us. The wind tore our aged flag into tatters. We bought a new one from Annin today after our visit to the travel doc who punched us full of holes for the upcoming trip to the Amazon. Short Hills is still struggling with the clean up from Sandy, piles of branches are still all over the streets.

Santa has been delivering bags of presents, donated by families in NJ and VT, to the kids in Newark that she regularly visits at Beth Israel Hospital and Lincoln School. I’ve noticed that, in NJ, a Subaru substitutes for a sleigh.

Today brings the Mayan Apocalypse, it’s hard to believe that, centuries ago, the Mayans were able to predict the Republican behavior so perfectly.


Santa has been delivering stuffed animals, books and games to kids at Newark Beth Israel and Lincoln School in Newark.

Busy, Busy, Busy.

12-16-12 SHORT HILLS: Hectic Holiday Happenings Highlighted by HJF. Where to start? We went to the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart for their annual carol sing. It’s a great venue with great music and, if you like carols, the CD is available on their website, www.cathedralbasicilia.org. That was Wednesday, I think.

Thursday we were off to Brooklyn for the Packer Middle School performance of ‘The Little Mermaid’. It was opening night and the audience was agog with excitement. The taut and compelling dramatic and emotional content of this theatrical offering was almost too much to bear for some of the younger attendees. Granddaughter Lucy was dominating as Queen Triton.

BTW granddaughter Maggie’s and her friend, Hope’s, music video has become a You Tube hit that has had over 120,000 views in a week. It can be seen, heard and downloaded at: http://wesinghappysongs.bandcamp.com/track/gangnam-style-cover You could also Google ‘wesinghappysongs’.

Saturday was back to the city for ‘A Prairie Home Companion’, Garrison and the gang were good as ever. Itzhak Perlman played a subway violinist on Guy Noir. After the show we dined at BXL with Leesa and Roger, our theater companions.


Cathedral Basilica Carol Sing, lit up and candlelit.

Queen Triton.

'A Prairie Home Companion' warms up.

Times Square with lots of Santa's.