WhetherWeather

May 5

This will be first in an ongoing series of fragments, overheard comments, meditations, memories and musings about the weather. It's too big a topic for a single blog, but I hope to collect thoughts as they blow in, bundle them up, and pick through them later.

WhetherWeather stems from the intuition that the weather in this part of Alberta not only shapes the land but the people and the politics here. That there is weather inside of us as surely as outside. That there are interesting thoughts to be thought about the very fact we complain about the weather. That an endless summer day here is, in a sense, as fragile and brittle as deep, dark December.

I will also devote a future blog in its entirety to Jeff Lynne's masterpiece, Mr. Blue Sky.

But for now, it's a look back on today. This is called Just Add Blue Sky.



May 6

 The first eight words spoken in our house this morning came from Shelagh: "They say it's going to be 30 today." But that's only half the story. Edmonton weather routinely smuggles in a but. And here it is from my Twitter feed:

4m
MT : 29C today & sunny... BUT, a cold front sweeps through and wind picks up w/ chance of rain early TUE, high 14C

Or, more elegantly, and from my non-outsourced, offline memory:

He knows changes aren't permanent/
But change is.

May 7

 Deserving itself of an extended analysis, the construction of weather into news narrative in Edmonton is again on my mind this morning. Yesterday, it went kinda like this on the old CITV as Gord captured the weather change thus and so: What's going on here? One day we have to plug in the air conditioner and the next the furnace is kicking in! Change, incongruity is the stuff of news, even when the bigger change would be weather that doesn't.

May 8

 It strikes me that weather is an intrusion on the order of the city.

May 25

 We don't just complain about the weather. We apologize for it. Like it's in the category of things, including architecture, litter and driving habits, we can actually do something about:


2m
I'm just sorry we've welcomed you to with such rotten weather. Hope you have a good visit, notwithstanding.
 View conversation

May 25

Overheard conversation between two guys in the locker room today:
"How's it goin?"
"I wish it didn't rain."
"Yeah."
"But we could use it gettin greener here."
"For sure."
"We do get it all."

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