Hatam Soferet

Wood on weather

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 23:05:27 GMT

Emphases mine:

Dec. 15, Sat., <1683> a great deal of snow fell; a child or two going to Wheatly starv'd to death at the bottome of Shotover. Frost followed; and continued extreem cold. Innocents day, Friday, Dec. 28, a very cold day. Wednesday night, 2 Jan., <1634> my bottle of ink frose at the fier side; Thursday night, the like; Friday night, Jan. 4, the like. Weather so cold, as not the like knowne by man. Sat., Sunday <Jan. 5, 6> extreame cold. Monday <Jan. 7> it gave a little. Thursday the 10 and Friday 11 it gave and thaw'd so that the spouts ran and the snow and some ice went away. Jan. 13 at night (Sunday) it frose againe and by degrees till the 22 day it was then as cold as in the former frost. Jan. 22 (T.) at night and 23 day (W.) extreame cold; Jan. 23 (W.) at night extreame cold; Jan. 24 (Th.) very cold, the quil would not run; and so continued till (M.) 4 Feb. and then in the evening it began to thaw which continued till 8 Feb. (F.) frost in the morning. So for severall mornings following little frosts. Did a great deal of mischief.

In addition to the ink freezing at the fireside and refusing to run in the quill, there's something emphatic about that extreame, don't you think?

From The life and times of Anthony Wood: antiquary, of Oxford, 1632-1695, described by himself.

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obligatory weather post

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:05:12 GMT

According to the NY Times, today was the hottest day in New York since Aug. 9, 2001, when it reached 103 degrees. Today it got to 102 in Central Park.

ConEdison, electricity providers for the city, were today expecting enormous demand for electricity to run all the air-conditioners - their forecast was for 13,450 megawatts, a surge they said — fingers crossed — they were prepared for.

“We’re expecting a record today, but we’re not encouraging people to set it,” said Michael S. Clendenin, a spokesman for Con Ed.

Reflecting on the absurdity of a situation where we frantically burn fossil fuels to offset the effects of, er, burning too many fossil fuels.

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la vie soferet - splosh!

Mon, 03 May 2010 12:55:34 GMT

New York woke me up in the middle of the night with some truly impressive rain. Really, it must take a lot of effort to drop that much water out of the sky.

I was going to try and take a picture for you, but by the time it was light and I'd showered (why did I bother doing that? I could have just sat on the fire escape for a bit) and stuff, the rain had slacked off.

When it started raining (in the middle of the night, of course) I got out of bed and closed the windows, because I have bits of a Torah on my various tables, all too close to the windows for irresponsible sleeping through rainstorms. Okay, they're all at least a metre away from the windows and it would take some REALLY determined rain to get that far in, but you try sleeping through a rainstorm with open windows and bits of a Torah on your tables, and I bet you wouldn't make much of it either.

Oh, re: tables - that'd be one writing-desk, and one dining-table, which is temporarily serving as a Torah Corrections Zone (that sounds a lot more borstalian than it actually is), so meals are eaten on the ~~balcony~~ fire escape during fine weather and on the couch otherwise. Lest you should think that la vie soferet involves sumptuous drawing-rooms, or something.

Anyway, I'm off to Hadar today. Cheerio.

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Post from last Tuesday at the airport

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:38:19 GMT

There's quite the lightning storm going on out there. I'm at the airport, so I have an unusually large amount of horizon to look at, and the lightning's the kind that plays acriss the sky as far as you can see, back and forth, these gigantic parallel streaks filling the sky and flicking off again.

It's the strange kind of lightning storm that fills the sky but makes no sound. There's no rain, no thunder, just the sky lighting up, like headlights across a ceiling, but it's the biggest ceiling *ever* and the biggest headlights too. Every so often a bigger whopper than usual breaks through and you can see the bolt shaking itself into the ground.

There might be thunder, actually; I'm wearing earplugs because someone's talking about healthcare on the piped television and it makes me mad to listen to white dudes with health insurance pontificating about why the existing system is made of cookies. Cos from where I'm standing it's a question of "how many people have to be permanently crippled from inadequate care before you start feeling sorry enough for them that you want your health money to pay healthcare costs rather than insurance executives," which seems like something of a no-brainer to me; I'd much rather my friends got treatment than that we should pay for some twerps in an office to shuffle claim forms and misfile things. I mean per capita the US could spend what the UK spends, and everyone would have health care, and there'd still be bloody masses left over, and we could use it for unemployment benefits for those recently fired from insurance companies. Anyway, I'm wearing earplugs, so if there is thunder I can't hear it. But I don't think there is.

Talking of health insurance, as part of my divorce paperwork, I and he have to submit a form which says: I [NAME] fully understand that upon the entrance of this divorce agreement, I may no longer be allowed to receive health coverage under my former spouse's health insurance plan. I may be entitled to purchase health insurance on my own through a COBRA option, if available, otherwise I may be required to secure my own health insurance.

That is, before your divorce is admitted for the consideration of the court, you have to turn in a sworn statement to the effect that you understand just how much a divorce can bollocks up your healthcare. I know that benefits and pensions and stuff can play a part when deciding whether to get divorced or not, but healthcare - and sworn statements - sheesh.

For those not used to the US system: there's this magical thing called a pre-existing condition, you see; if you have ever been sick before you are a Bad Risk. If you actually have real chronic problems and need to get your own insurance after your divorce you'd better marry a doctor pronto, and if you once got sick ten years ago and got better and didn't think it worth mentioning you'd better pray you never need expensive treatment because then the insurance company digs that up and says "oo you had a pre-existing condition your insurance is invalidated now we don't have pay your bills NEH NEH NEH and btw you owe the hospital several hundred thousand dollars" and you're screwed again. So getting your own insurance isn't necessarily going to happen, even if you've got a job that offers it. Oh, your insurance premiums pay for the dirt-digging peons as well. It's in their interest to deny you care so they put a lot of effort into it. Ugh.

The downside of watching spectacular electrical storms from the airport is that...they close the airport. Planes are great big Faraday cages so people in planes are okay, but I suppose it's dangerous for the ground crews, and I spose it might fry the tyres as well.

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mur ice cream now plz?

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:17:26 GMT

It being vilely hot and sticky in New York at the moment, the fancy takes me to show y'all just how little of a sheet of Torah is actually visible while I'm writing it. Well-written, polished, intellectual blog posts with nicely-edited pictures and everything are kind of hard when almost your entire brain is screaming "MORE ICE CREAM NOW PLZ," and this is moderately educational, anyway.

Here's a picture of my tabletop last Thursday.

A and B: plasticised cardboard off old calendars (or cereal boxes, whatever's around). This is a general protection against mucky fingers, dust (not that the work is ever lying around long enough to collect dust, oh no), stray ink blots, and the like.

C and D: kitchen paper. On hot hot hot days, the function of the kitchen paper is primarily as a sweat-soaker. Resting my forearms on kitchen paper means that when I raise my arm to dip the pen in the ink or write along the line or other such activities calling for a certain degree of mobility in the limbs, there isn't a sticky timelag while my arm peels itself away from A and B.

You will notice the inkstains on D, though; that's because even on sensible days when one can wear sleeves to the wrist one still needs pen-wipers. Long sleeves present a peril all of their own, namely FLUFF, which is why A and B are present whenever I can manage it; there's nothing quite like finishing a day's work in a purple sweater and realising that now you have to fetch your erasing sponge and remove the delicate purple bloom from your parchment, except *not* realising it and having your client ask why their sefer is patchily purple. I would guess. Not that that has ever happened to me. No indeed.

A thru D are attached to the parchment with paperclips. E, though, actually moves (that is to say, it is mobile. I move it, like a manual carriage return). I call E a finger guard; goodness knows what anyone else calls it, but its function is to keep the fingers off the parchment, so "finger guard" seems like a good name to me.

Parchment is temperamental, especially on hot days; it likes to cockle itself nostalgically and ripple gently across the desk. This is not especially helpful when you are trying to write on the darn stuff, so your left hand has the constant task of holding flat the square inch you're writing on. Without the trusty finger guard, that means you're continually writing on nice fresh fingerprints, and that's not so spiffy.

F is my tikkun page, wot I am copying off of. I have it as near to the working line as possible, because it's much easier to flick one's eyes a short way than raise one's whole head. You aren't allowed to write sans tikkun, as I've mentioned before.

G is the usual amount of visible Torah, although recently the days have been so hot and sticky that the ink takes forever to dry, so there are perhaps ten lines visible instead of the more usual four.

H. I'm very proud of H. It's that non-slip stuff that yachtie tablemats are made out of, that will sit quite happily on a table inclined at thirty degrees and not go anywhere. Ideal for people who work on tables inclined at thirty degrees, if you see what I mean. H is being a place marker, so that I don't go writing line 29 instead of line 35 or some similar foolishness.

I uses the same stuff to keep the inkwell and other tools from sliding off the desk. On I you can see tile; scalpel; pen; inkwell; giant blots. The tile and scalpel are for pen-sharpening (the tile serves as a chopping board). The giant blots are the natural consequence of giving Soferet Jen bottles of ink in handy easy-to-knock-over locations (you might describe me as ham-fisted, but we're too kosher for that aren't we); at J you can see how the wall has suffered similarly in the past.

Ice cream is totally relevant to writing Torah, anyway. They both come from cows.

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Good weather

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:20:54 GMT

livredor and I went touristing on Sunday, to the Brooklyn Bridge. First we had EXTREME PIZZA in the East Village, and then we went over into Brooklyn (via 14th St to see the moving platforms) so as to walk back over the bridge towards Manhattan.

Weather.com had told us that there would be Isolated T-Storms (I insist upon interpreting this as "isolated tea storms," because it pleases me), and standing in the sunshine at the Brooklyn end of the bridge, we could see an Isolated Tea Storm over Manhattan.

Liv observed that it's obvious why the Dutch liked Manhattan; the sky had that curious opaque grey with funny pearly-yellow clouds look to it that you see in Dutch paintings.

Walking over the bridge towards the storm, we saw a huge streak of lightning fizzle out of the clouds and ground itself in the lightning conductor on the American International Building. That's the Empire State Building in the picture, so it was like that except a bit further south. Anyway, the American International Building is the tallest building in Lower Manhattan, so you would sort of expect lightning to ground there, but I've never actually seen actual lightning actually sparking into an actual lightning conductor before. It was very exciting.

Mostly it wasn't raining on us, either. We were on the bridge between Brooklyn which was doing just fine and Manhattan which now had proper lowering clouds absolutely filled with sheets of lightning periodically grounding itself in any tall building that happened to be handy, watching the storm (you can see a lot of sky, from the bridge), not getting wet, and having occasional bouts of engineering lust at how pretty the bridge is.

I had the Umbrella of Utter Happiness with me so when it started actually raining we were okay. The Umbrella of Utter Happiness is concentric fuschia and marigold stripes with radial blend, and I love it to bits. (It is from the guy with a stall at 73rd and Broadway, if you're interested.) It wasn't much use against the Total Tropical Downpour, but happily we were basically in the subway by that time.

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