The cats and I braced for another single-digit night. Well, at 7 a.m. on the morning of 2.2.26, in Kingsport with the heaters cranking all over town it's four degrees below zero Fahrenheit. That's twenty below zero Celsius. That's so cold that with the two small space heaters that are all the office's one electrical circuit will run, the desktop computer's monitor shivers visibly when the wind blows.
And the cats are about to have rice for breakfast. We're out of kibble and down to one packet of rice. There's money to buy food in the house, but that's like there being a delivery truck in town. A few miles of snow on either side separate the money and the truck from the store. And the stores were running out of staples, because more snow separated them from their corporate suppliers, a week ago. And nobody's asking anybody to drive anything on a mix of four to eight inches of powdery snow, some of which melted in the sun yesterday, and solid ice underneath. So the cats get the last packet of rice for breakfast and the last kibbles and crumbs in the sack for dinner and, if the sun doesn't perform unexpected wonders this afternoon, who knows what they'll get for breakfast. Cornbread or lentils or maybe I can rinse the chili sauce off a can of beans.
(Drudge came out to report that the cats were able to sleep comfortably through the night, cuddled together in their fur in the cellar, but they are tired of snow up to their chins and want it to melt away the way all snow in Virginia is supposed to do. Snow here is supposed to melt the day after it falls.)
Oh woe, oh wail. Even our Canadian readers will have to allow that this is cold, though they get to add that they've seen colder temperatures and we're a lot of whiny wimps, but this is the South and it's not supposed to be this cold here.
And I am the Grandmother of Blankets and, with the blankets and the space heater as close to the bed as it could get without actually touching blankets, I was quite cozy all night. Though I am now sitting between two space heaters and pausing between paragraphs to hold my hands out to the one in front.
In 1985 when the all-time record for an overnight low was set, I was in Washington, in a house with central gas heating, and didn't have to go outside or even into the basement where I could feel any effects of what I could see out through the double-paned windows. Right now...
If you're feeling this freeze this way, Gentle Readers, enjoy it. This is one to tell our grandchildren about some day...
--Oops. I mean, for those of us whose grandchildren aren't already here to enjoy and remember it for themselves.
Animals
(Photo by Ari Kankainen.)
Cats like this have been around for a long time, though they've always been rare, but only in 2024 did geneticists discover that this shade of grey is genetically different from any other shade: The cats are basically tuxies, with shorter hairs in the usual black and white pattern, but the longer black hairs on their backs and tails are black at the root fading to white at the tip. The mutation has been given the name salmiak after the trademark of a snack sold in Finland, where the cats' genetic distinction was discovered; it translates as "salted licorice."
People had just been calling the cats "marle" or "roan," but now you don't have to borrow those words for dogs and horses with similar coloring.
Education
It's good to go back and see how things turned out sometimes, plus revisiting this old news story gives me a chance to explain something many people misunderstand...
What happened? The idea of closing dozens of public schools was discussed with the intention of deciding which of those schools to close, not closing all of them. Several schools were temporarily closed in the fall of 2024 because of the hurricanes. All schools reopened in 2025 and six are going to be closed, or rather "consolidated" together with other schools, this year.
Now, about charter schools. Charter schools are public schools. When the number of students justifies it, the States have been issuing "charters" allowing private people and organizations to organize the new schools the population demands. Charter schools may or may not have a special flavor; sometimes they're run exactly like the overcrowded public schools from which they allow a few students and teachers to spill over. (When I was writing about this for an international web site, a question readers submitted about one charter school was "What makes this school special?" and their answer was "It offers room for the older school nearby to expand." Seriously. That was all they advertised. Sometimes charter schools can at least advertise a new building--or an old historic one.) They're allowed to offer an emphasis on a particular subject, sometimes a subject that's not adequately presented in the older public school; some charter schools are "magnets" for those who want or need special help with math or English, or want more foreign language, vocational, art, or music courses, or don't need to spend as much time reviewing as the public school class needs to pass the same tests. There can even be an ethnic flavor--some charter schools specialize in the history, literature, and culture of a group's heritage--but, if people who don't belong to that ethnic group want to attend those schools, they have to be made welcome. There are charter schools with Black American, Greek, Chinese, and other cultural minority concentrations, but they are public schools that use the regular public school textbooks and curriculum, plus whatever cultural education the teachers can work in. Charter schools are in no way to be confused with church schools, nor with the sort of private schools that are planned primarily for the founding family and their friends.
Electricity
If mine's not working, which thank goodness it is, I don't have time to sit around trying to "reframe" the experience. Not at this time of year, anyway. Without substantial repairs to both chimneys this old wooden house does not have a safe alternative heat source. In normal cold weather I might be able to dance around a fire out in the yard until the lights came back on. In this weather I'd have to try to squeeze into the cave with the cats, or else scoot boots down a long, icy hill and hope I got into town before I froze solid. Most people don't even have caves. We need to break up that grid before damage to power lines a hundred miles away costs us any more human lives.
But for those who can enjoy being off the grid, even in cold snowy weather, Sherry Marr offers a lovely way to reframe the moment:
Zazzle
In blog housekeeping, I noticed that Google was showing some Zazzle images again. Can it be? Let's see. Zazzle has pulled down some of my designs as outdated non-sellers (well, yes, the 2024 calendar isn't likely to sell now) but this one's still showing:
You know you want to buy one. Gentle Readers, the Save The Butterflies campaign is global. I saw a lovely Asian design with Ceylon Rose butterflies (remember https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2023/03/butterfly-of-week-ceylon-rose.html ?) and would like to see more designs, as Zazzle becomes available in more countries, showing people's appreciation of their own butterflies. The ones on the blanket are all North American. You do you. Feature butterflies appropriate to the wildlife conservation efforts your designs are being sold in aid of.
One for each car seat if you plan to travel this February!
What provoked me to revisit Zazzle was that they've added a new product, or they file it as a new product: thank-you cards. These cards are exactly like their other cards, only in a separate category on the web site.
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