Commonplacing

Dec 7, 2022

Some reading on snow:

It began snowing here in Anchorage yesterday afternoon into the evening, waking in the middle of the night to find that it hasn’t stopped. By daylight, it is a winter wonderland of snow, over a foot deep. Schools are closed much to my sleepy son’s delight. I love snow. And this is glorious snow. There were winters we’ve spent up here that were deeply cold without snow, dark and grueling to endure. Now the magpies and chickadees are chatting as they find the tray of food that now sits within a rampart of snow. My bulldog did a faceplant into the snow as I tried to coax him in. It’s cozy and beautiful and it’s a relief to know it won’t be one of those winters. It simply can’t be any longer. Hooray.

So my thoughts have been about snow. How the first study of snowflakes was done by Frances Chickering, a woman who studied and created life-like snowflakes from paper over several winters in Maine, publishing an assemblage of her studies in 1864. Twenty years later, snow became a life obsession for Wilson Bentley, who took advantage of early photography to capture snowflakes on film. Nearly a century later, the physicist Ukichiro Nakaya, who, when stationed in the northern reaches of Japan in Hokkaido, turned his attention to the formation of snow crystals. Today, another modern scientist has made snowflakes a life’s passion. If you live in cold climates, you can learn how to preserve your own snowflake here (the magic is apparently…superglue?).

Snowflake studies: Chickering, Bentley, Nakaya.

Some other links:

One of my favorite writers—Enheduanna, a woman who is the first named author, whose name is attached to some of the first poetry ever written—is getting more deserved attention.

Public Domain Review, which never disappoints, has a virtual advent calendar-type preview of works that will fall under public domain as the clock strikes midnight on 2023.

Sending coziness to you all this lovely, wintry day.