ever-fixed mark

Yesterday, I went searching for the school district’s web page to see if they had posted a school cancellation notice. There was nothing yet, but there was a list of places where cancellation information could be found — radio stations, TV stations, and so forth. Apparently, the fire station also rings its bell in a certain pattern at 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. to signal weather-related school changes: two dongs for two hours late, four dongs for no school. I had not been aware of the fire bell code.

The late news did not report that the school district was closed, but at 6:30 the next morning I was awakened by four bells, saving me the trouble of sitting through the display of 400 school closings until they got to the Ns.

I was charmed by this display of analog non-verbal mass communication, and I tried to think of some other modern-day examples. Here’s what I came up with:

• Emergency sirens
• Clock chimes
• Call to prayer
• Skyscraper lights that indicate weather changes

With the prevalence of electronic networks, this type of communication might be dying out. Any other examples?

This afternoon, I got two e-mails from book club members alerting me to John Updike’s death, and I promptly e-mailed another friend. We all felt like we knew him in a minor way: I was born in the same town as Updike; my friend L. and he went to the same dentist; J. is helping put together the local literary festival that was planning to honor him in 2010; and then there were his books. At 76, and still so prolific, he was too young to go.

Another writer I’ve covered in these pages, Harold Pinter, also kicked off recently. These things tend to come in threes; who’s next?

Apropos of nothing (really), what IS David Brooks smoking these days? He obviously can’t come up with anything interesting to say about the Obama administration, because he’s back to these “social criticism” columns. Today’s topic: a liberal arts education is nice, but all that questioning the status quo is so tiresome; the real heroes are those who “think institutionally,” those with the great courage to live life strictly within the confines of the rules laid down by the institutions in which they find themselves.

No, really.

In this way of living, to borrow an old phrase, we are not defined by what we ask of life. We are defined by what life asks of us. As we go through life, we travel through institutions — first family and school, then the institutions of a profession or a craft. Each of these institutions comes with certain rules and obligations that tell us how to do what we’re supposed to do…. So the institutionalist has a deep reverence for those who came before and built up the rules that he has temporarily taken delivery of.

Institutions, like family. Marriage. Slavery. Patriarchy. Damn those liberal arts-educated yuppies with all their damn questions.

Sometimes, I think Brooks is trying to become the Stephen Colbert of the New York Times.

For the third time, I have mono.

The last time it happened, the doctor called to give me the test result and left me with a hearty “Sucks to be you!” This time, since I was dealing with the physician’s assistant, she wanted me to come back in for a follow-up. (Have you ever noticed that for routine care paraprofessionals are much better doctors than real doctors?)

“Mono leaves you at risk for liver and spleen enlargement,” she told me. “We particularly want to take care that your spleen doesn’t rupture.”

Intact spleen: a goal we all can get behind.

“Don’t engage in any high-impact activities, like sledding, ice skating, skiing….”

In other words, pretty much everything that’s fun to do in the winter, except for…

“…or vigorous sex.”

…that. Well, at least there’s “Battlestar Galactica.”

“Now, you could rupture your spleen just sitting watching TV, of course, but don’t worry…”

Worrying!

“…you don’t need to sit around and wonder, ‘Did it rupture?’ If it ruptures, it will hurt, and you’ll know it.”

And then what?

“If that happens, go to the hospital, and we’ll admit you for observation.”

Observation? No surgery? Tylenol? Leeches?

“These days we pretty much just keep you in the hospital for observation, give you some blood, and wait for your spleen to repair itself.”

…

“So try to take it easy. Every chance you get, go to bed early…”

Ha ha ha ha ha.

“Sleep late…”

HA HA HA ha ha ha ha ha ha

“If you’re feeling tired, take a nap.”

HAHAHAHAHA HA HA HA HA HA HA…..Doc, I’m laughing so hard I might rupture my spleen.

My brother and sister-in-law gave Aitch a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey for Christmas (five sizes too big! So he can wear it to school every day for the next five years! Thanks, guys!), and he has consequently become a Steelers fan. We caught a few minutes of the game last night, and I was struck by the awesome typeface used for the numbers and text on the players’ uniforms. (You’d think I would have noticed the past 20 times that Aitch has worn the jersey since Christmas day, but it’s more striking when you see the whole team arrayed on the field.) It’s Futura Condensed, one of the few sans-serif fonts in the NFL, kind of old-fashioned and edgy at the same time, with italics giving an added kick. Go Steelers!

Not surprisingly, there is more than one person on the Internets who cares about such things.

Some time later I changed channels and lit on a PBS program in which they were discussing typefaces. One talking head after another proceeded to savage Helvetica: So boring! So predictable! So mainstream! So unadventurous! I was tired and drifted in and out of consciousness, but every time I picked up the thread they were STILL dissing Helvetica. Those people ripped Helvetica a new one. They beat up Helvetica and took its lunch money. They accused Helvetica of lobbing rockets into Israel AND committing atrocities in Gaza. I was waiting for them to shower a little opprobrium on Comic Sans MS, which I personally consider responsible for most of the evils PowerPoint has unleashed upon the world, but no. It was All Helvetica, All the Time.

Today I googled “PBS, typeface, Helvetica” to see what kind of program I had been watching, and saw that indeed it was a documentary devoted entirely to Helvetica. And people make fun of public television!

Thus ends our tale of two typefaces.

There’s no reason for me to like ice skating. Ice is hard and cold; my ankles are weak and my feet the wrong shape for skinny figure skates. Even so, skating outdoors is for me one of life’s greatest pleasures, and my only complaint about winter is that it’s not consistently cold enough here to freeze the pond frequently enough for my liking.

In the past few weeks, we’ve had every sort of weather here: cold snap, 50-degree thaw, snowstorm, rainstorm, ice storm, earthquake (really). Just before Christmas, I was walking Minor home from school and saw some people skating out on the pond. I deposited Minor, rounded up Aitch, and headed out to the pond, but by then the surface was empty. There is no “all clear” signal for skating at that pond, and I felt nervous about bringing Aitch out on the ice in the dark without some confirmation that the ice was safe.

I called the police department to ask if there was some gauge they used — x days below y degrees, for example — to determine if the ice were safe. “Hmm, I never thought of that before,” the officer said. “Call the fiyah depahtment.” The fire department said that they do not certify ice safety because of the liability. I asked, “When would you personally consider it safe to skate?” He said, “I guess if other people were skating too.”

My friend C. tells me that in Sweden they have a similar yardstick, with a little saying that goes something like this: “When can you tell that the ice safe for skating? When the Svensons are out on it.”

So yes, we’re all irrational sheep, and I knew the ice was solid, but I still couldn’t bring myself to take Aitch out. We went to the indoor rink instead, and the next day the temperature went up to 60.

This week, after another series of ice storm/rain storm/slush storm, the pond finally froze over again. This time, there were other skaters, but the ice surface was rather…uneven. I’m not talking about the kind of texture that happens on an indoor rink after an hour of free skate, when they send the Zamboni out to make it all smooth again. I’m talking…ripples. Divots. Speed bumps. In the ice.

I am a fair-ice skater at best, and the prospect of having to navigate through an obstacle course in search of clear ice, all while towing a five-year-old, is extremely intimidating. I have always hated making the transition from non-ice to ice, like the first time you step on the skating rink from the floor, and when skating on an ungroomed pond, you make that transition every few minutes.

Luckily, there is a race of people here in the Northeast who live for winter, and as soon as the ice is thick they show up with brooms, shovels, and other implements to resurface sections of the ice by hand. Once they’ve done the hard work, they set up permanent hockey camp on the cleared bits. When they take a break, we sometimes get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Yesterday I heard one of the hockey dads lamenting the conditions on his makeshift rink, noting that the impending snowstorm would not make the ice any easier to clear. “Know what we should do?” he said to another hockey dad. “Let’s come out here tonight, before the snow hits, and flood it. We’ll bring a generator and a submersible, and then tomorrow morning we can come down here first thing and clear the snow.” One thing I’ve realized since moving here is that every household north of the Merrimac River has its own generator, at the ready for emergencies like power failure or uneven ice.

You’ve got to love these hardy New Englanders

Last night, Husband and I went out to dinner. We were walking home around 11:00 p.m. when we saw a police car parked downtown with a cop in the driver’s seat. Like most squad cars, this one was equipped with a laptop, and the officer was using it. Since it was so dark, we could clearly see what was on the illuminated screen.

That’s right: Solitaire.

Dear Mr. Port City Cop on the Beat: Isn’t there any policy against playing games on your work computer while on duty? And, even if there isn’t, don’t you think it would be prudent to stay, I don’t know, alert while on patrol?

Also, you totally missed red seven on black eight.

“Hell, honey, it may just be the tequila talking, but…whaddaya say we just quit our jobs, sell the house, and open a worm farm in Maine?”