Althouse: At the Hoarfrost Café...

January 3, 2013

At the Hoarfrost Café...

... it's warm inside.

58 comments:

jungatheart said...: Lovely. What time of day was that taken?

(Come on Althouse, I'm jonesin' for that Fitzgerald quote...or do you already know that...hee hee hee.); 1/3/13, 10:21 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: With the gun battle looming ahead it dawned on me something I've known all along but seemed to have forgotten.

When the rights I dont like suffer, the right I like and care about suffer too.

El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz. Benito Juárez

"Respect for others’ rights is peace”.; 1/3/13, 10:24 AM
Anonymous said...: No socks (de rigueur for south east coastal people), minimal shoes, light khakis and at about our lovely year round mean temperature of 65*. The classroom door is propped open, the kids are working on an Executive Branch worksheet and i was finally able to dispell the myth that ran like wildfire through my school on election day that Mitt Romney "he be takin' 'way our foodstamps". Long discussion on the duties of the Executive Branch. Some glimmers of understanding...; 1/3/13, 10:29 AM
Ex-prosecutor said...: Professor Althouse:

What command, if any, is given Zeus when he leaves your house and runs to yours? I assume something is said to him so that he knows he's expected, and, presumably, that a tasty morsel awaits.; 1/3/13, 10:32 AM
Ex-prosecutor said...: Sorry, I meant, when he leaves his house and runs to yours.; 1/3/13, 10:33 AM
Anonymous said...: Our school stationed Police Officer (carrying a taser and a Glock) just walked by, stuck his head into the classroom, smiled and waved at a number of kids, asked a how LeCharles was doing and sauntered off on his rounds. kinda' like a beat cop. Comforting in an old fashioned kinda' way.; 1/3/13, 10:33 AM
F said...: Out here in northern Nevada hoarfrost is called by its Washoe Indian name: pogonip. (Pogo will like that.) I pronounced it for a long time with the accent on the first syllable, but learned just last year the accent is on the second syllable. Pity, really: I liked it better the other way. Whatever, it's beautiful when the Sierras are covered in pogonip.; 1/3/13, 10:35 AM
RazorSharpSundries said...: Surfed, you need to send one of those Executive Branch worksheets to the White House.; 1/3/13, 10:39 AM
traditionalguy said...: A frosty morn not soon forgotten.

Talking with politically astute folks around Atlanta in the past two days, the meme has been that we are the forgotten under continual propaganda waves of nonsense which now controls elections using Obama's smiling face.

The issue seems not to be saving the country/Titanic which is sinking. It is only who gets the few seats in the life boats. The rest are to be forgotten.; 1/3/13, 10:42 AM
traditionalguy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/3/13, 10:43 AM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/3/13, 10:48 AM
Meade said...: Thanks, deborah. That was a little after sunrise, as I pulled out of a rest stop near Ft. Morgan, CO.

Ex-prosecutor, it works like this: I phone Zeus's owners, ask if he's free and, if so, invite him over. I'm told that, upon hearing my name, he excitedly heads for the back door. The gate is opened and he bounds for our back door. No commands. He totally understood the drill after the very first time we did it - run over to Meadhouse and you'll get to go for a run/swim and/or a trip to the dog park. (And then a nap in Meade's comfy chair while the humans do dog-knows-what in front of their computer thingies.); 1/3/13, 10:48 AM
Ann Althouse said...: " I'm jonesin' for that Fitzgerald quote.."

LOL

I've got to get my ski run in first. It will arrive!; 1/3/13, 10:49 AM
Anonymous said...: Lots of Canadian geese and egrets are just outside the opened classroom door grazing through the grass for whatever they can find on the menu. The other day there was a large Blue heron in the school pond. It will be snackin' on the baby mallards when they hatch and go swimming by behind momma Mallard. The Blue Heron snags the last one in the row and swallows it whole. The kids find that fascinating and gross. I equate it with the chicken wings at Popeye's.; 1/3/13, 10:50 AM
Astro said...: Last week on a trip on I-77 through West Virginia I saw huge swaths of mountainsides covered in hoarfrost. It was lovely, like scenes from some fantasy movie.; 1/3/13, 10:57 AM
Petunia said...: Hey Meade, I have a plotthound who could use some exercise. May I send him over? He'd have to cross Regent Street to get to your house but he's pretty smart.

Thanks!; 1/3/13, 10:58 AM
rhhardin said...: Remnants of 9 degree ground fog, visible only as haze at the distant tree line.; 1/3/13, 10:59 AM
KCFleming said...: We call it lady-of-the-evening frost when we gots company.; 1/3/13, 10:59 AM
kentuckyliz said...: I'm enjoying my last few winter break days in the frozen North. I adjusted well this year. Some years I shiver under quilts and whine that it's toooo cooooold.

After the holidays, work will be hella busy for a couple of weeks, then I'll plunge into winter blues until March.; 1/3/13, 11:00 AM
garage mahal said...: Noted black historian Glenn Grothman made CNN last night.; 1/3/13, 11:03 AM
rhhardin said...: There's two lectures on Gatsby Yale if you need a lift. (this one and the following one); 1/3/13, 11:07 AM
Anonymous said...: Think I'll pick some tangerines from the neighbor's tree after work today. They just fall and rot if I don't. Pass em' out to the kids in class tomorrow. Probably some law against that but I've been a scofflaw since the late 60's...; 1/3/13, 11:12 AM
jungatheart said...: Thanks Meade and Althouse...I didn't catch that that was a Meade photo.

Thanks, rh, very cool. I see the vids go to Faulkner's Sound and Fury next. I'd started that online the other day, but it was missing pages and stopped after a few chapters, so I must obtain. It's strange, my reading history does not include Hemingway, Faulkner, or Fitzgerald, except for short stories, which I always saw as a gap in my education.; 1/3/13, 11:17 AM
Anonymous said...: Glenn Grothman........

Words elude me.; 1/3/13, 11:21 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: It has been cold Cold COLD and double fucking COLD here for several weeks and seems likely to continue for another week or more.

While it is beautiful in some ways it is horrible. Below zero or single digits at night. Barely above freezing during the day. Freezing fog all morning long. Ice everywhere. Yesterday's high was 27 degrees. The river is almost completely frozen over. The shallow areas are totally and solidly frozen over. How do the bazillions of frogs that come out in the spring survive this????? The birds are no longer wary of us when we come out to feed them and lurk like something from Hitchcock's "The Birds" waiting for their daily hand out.

Frosted tree at sunset. The sun was just breaking through the clouds and shining on the bottom half of the tree and the top was already shadowed by the oncoming evening. Strange and ominous light.

Sunset through the waning snow storm. Last gasp of a futile cold sun that doesn't warm anything.

I'm sick of it all.; 1/3/13, 11:42 AM
rhhardin said...: Rush is weirdly off on his economics today, as usual.

He doesn't understand any system that works in numbers.

So he's not a good explainer, and the show sucks until somebody straightens him out or he moves on.; 1/3/13, 11:47 AM
Richard Dolan said...: Enough with hoarfrost, pretty photos and the like. On to the more engaging subject of the history of flipping the bird.

Today, the 2d Circuit issued a decision in Swartz v. Insogna, a civil rights action, that had it origins in a citizen's decision to extend the middle finger to a cop who understood the expressive content but failed to appreciate the First Amendment implications. Judge Jon Newman begins his opinion noting that mighty legal consequences have grown from the small act of an old form of insult, and in a footnote launches into a history of the gesture, as follows:

See Bad Frog Brewery, Inc. v. New York State Liquor Authority,134 F.3d 87, 91 n.1 (2d Cir. 1998) (reporting the use of the gesture
by Diogenes to insult Demosthenes). Even earlier, Strepsiades was portrayed by Aristophanes as extending the middle finger to insult Aristotle. See Aristophanes, The Clouds (W. Arrowsmith, trans.,Running Press (1962)). Possibly the first recorded use of the gesture in the United States occurred in 1886 when a joint baseball team photograph of the Boston Beaneaters and the New York Giants showed a Boston pitcher giving the finger to the Giants. See Ira P. Robbins, Digitus Impudicus: The Middle Finger and the Law , 41 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1403, 1415 (2008).

All you grad students in literature, there may be a future in the clerkship business. As a business model, it beats blogging.; 1/3/13, 11:48 AM
MadisonMan said...: I'm sick of it all.

Preach it.

I'm thankful I'm someplace warmer for work next week. Nothing beats a break from Madison at any time between November and April.; 1/3/13, 11:59 AM
Tank said...: Louisville was hotter than Florida last night.

No GW in NJ today. Brrrr.; 1/3/13, 12:06 PM
Amartel said...: "Out here in northern Nevada hoarfrost is called by its Washoe Indian name: pogonip."

Over here on the other side of the Sierras we call it Tule fog. Frequently results in pile-ups all over I-5.; 1/3/13, 12:18 PM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: The sagacious Mr. Dolan makes an excellent point, but the clerkship business may not be for everyone.

"At the trial, there was much bickering between the prosecutor and defense counsel about the prurient interest branch of the Miller v. California,413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973), test."

Indeed.; 1/3/13, 12:25 PM
Unknown said...: Forty below at one point on the road between schools earlier this morning. Surfed's gloating is beyond the pale.; 1/3/13, 12:35 PM
garage mahal said...: Just got out ice fishing on Squaw Bay on Monona last Saturday. Always a little unnerving fishing 50 yards from open water though. I'll have to take a drive by Mendota to see what the ice looks like.; 1/3/13, 12:56 PM
tiger said...: Petunia said...
Hey Meade, I have a plotthound who could use some exercise. May I send him over? He'd have to cross Regent Street to get to your house but he's pretty smart.

Heh.
I laughed.
Out loud.; 1/3/13, 1:01 PM
Meade said...: Petunia, email me. If your hound is able to ride well with Zeus in the back of my CRV, I'll be happy to pick him up and take him to the dog park with us.; 1/3/13, 1:29 PM
ricpic said...: That photo outfargos Fargo! Dig all them o's.; 1/3/13, 2:06 PM
Crunchy Frog said...: Is there a list of what HTML tags are allowed here?; 1/3/13, 2:08 PM
ricpic said...: DBQ's winter lament and in particular her photo of the setting sun struggling through the snow reminded me that one of the best movies, in terms of conveying the grip of winter in rugged country, is The Pledge. The picture is pretty horrible in terms of its main theme (horribly effective that is) but it also conveys the grim beauty of the "unsexy" part of Nevada when the cold comes down. Shot in northern Nevada, not sure where. Starring Jack Nicholson; directed by Sean Penn.; 1/3/13, 2:16 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: All furniture stores online should have an "I Have Kids" filter that would automatically remove anything delicate or having sharp edges from the results.; 1/3/13, 2:19 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I was just walking back home and within a couple of block from my final destination I came across an automobile accident... a car drove into an utility pole.

I was listening to my iPod and thought of whipping it out to take a picture but the thought of the impression it might create chasten me not to do it. There was a neigbor watching and there was a fire and ambulance crew going about their work. No police thought.

Now I'm thinking, did I do the "right thing" or should I have taken that shot to share with you guys?; 1/3/13, 2:26 PM
Curious George said...: Here's some hoarfrost. Photos I took in 2009 when I lived in Madison.

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/22049_108295832513952_8215385_n.jpg

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/22049_108296279180574_3680403_n.jpg

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/22049_108299995846869_2560281_n.jpg; 1/3/13, 2:28 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: oops... that should read
No police though... w/o a t at the end.

But no police thought... policing thought?

Is that what I listened to? the thought of not taking the picture? a policing thought?; 1/3/13, 2:32 PM
ricpic said...: Taking the picture is okay if there is nothing you, the photographer, can do instead to help at the scene of the accident. Since there was a fire and ambulance crew already on the scene I think you were in the clear to take a picture.; 1/3/13, 2:36 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Faux water damage seems to be a popular look in wood finishes right now.; 1/3/13, 2:44 PM
edutcher said...: She doesn't have to be a hoar, just as long as she has enough upholstery to keep off the frost.; 1/3/13, 2:49 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: "Get that authentic recovered from a shipwreck look. Credenza going to collapse into a pile of splinters? Bookcase ready to keel over and die? Mold creeping up the side of the media center? No, it's just that fashionable, worn out feeling available wherever fine furniture is sold."; 1/3/13, 2:51 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: It's like these places bought half their pieces at the Miss Havisham estate sale.; 1/3/13, 2:54 PM
HT said...: Tonya!; 1/3/13, 3:07 PM
Clyde said...: When Elvis Presley started his career, his dance moves were censored on televsion because they were deemed too sexually suggestive. Then the Sixties came along, and we laughed at what prudes those people were back in the Fifties.

Flash forward another fifty years:

Utah School Stops Musical With Elvis Songs as Racy

A Utah school district has cancelled a high school play that uses Elvis Presley's music after a complaint about a sexually suggestive song.

Jordan School District officials in suburban Salt Lake City announced plans Wednesday to scrap Herriman High School's production of "All Shook Up," saying it could be offensive.

Rock and roll, sexually suggestive? Get outta town! Strangely, the article doesn't say which Elvis song was considered to be "sexually suggestive." However, it should be noted that the very term "rock and roll" was a synonym for sex!

:eyeroll:; 1/3/13, 3:18 PM
Clyde said...: I was chatting with a friend about the Icelandic Girl With No Name, a 15-year-old whose name (Blaer) is not in the official register of Icelandic names and is therefore known on all of her legal documents as "Girl." She and her mother are suing to get her name included on the list. Blaer is the Icelandic word for "light breeze," but the naming board ruled that is should have a masculine article rather than a feminine one and therefore was inappropriate for a girl's name.

My friend replied "Blair isn't too bad for an English name...maybe a little trendy. Not sure how Blaer sounds in Icelandic. But if my niece wanted to name her kid "Windy" or "Breeze" or "Draft" or "Zephyr" that would be WRONG!!"

Which made me go to the ssa.gov site and look up the popularity of the name Windy. It broke into the Top 1000 Girls names in 1967 (161 girls were named Windy that year) and stayed there through 1980, when it dropped out. It peaked in popularity in 1975 with 310 girls receiving the name.

Why did it break the Top 1000 in 1967?

The Association - Windy (1967 Ravinia Festival - Highland Park IL)"

Dig the chick who appears about 1:40 into the video. Man, that is one ugly swimsuit!; 1/3/13, 3:32 PM
Clyde said...: And since y'all were talking about fog before I got here, we had a dense fog advisory in SW Florida this morning. You could almost cut it with a knife. Once it burned off, though, it was a beautiful day. I just went outside to bring in the trash can and it was 79 degrees in my driveway.

Florida is a great place for a winter vacation.; 1/3/13, 3:47 PM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: Rainy, windy and 45 all this week in South Texas. It's chilly enough to require stylish winter wear that we hardly ever get to use, plus all our yards are desperate for the moisture, plus it's cozy and delightful to light the gas fireplace and snuggle under afghans while watching Firefly. But no slick roads or snow to shovel. Niiiiiice.; 1/3/13, 4:19 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: On sale for $179! He he he.; 1/3/13, 4:58 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: @ Freeman. OMG that is hilarious. We use those to cut up kindling and when the stump is really aged, oak wood makes great fires.

Sheesh. I should go to my wood pile....I must have a fortune out there.

:-); 1/3/13, 5:17 PM
Unknown said...: There are a lot of different kinds of frost. What makes you think this is hoar frost?; 1/3/13, 5:33 PM
ken in tx said...: Hoar as in hoarfrost is an alternate spelling and pronunciation of hair. Hoarfrost means frost that looks like hair. It has nothing to do with whores.; 1/3/13, 7:40 PM
Anonymous said...: Off topic, but you and Meade really live in an urban paradise. I actually lived in the neighborhood (306 N. Prospect) when I was enrolled at UW in 1972 and find it one of the nicest places to live in this state. I often drive past your place enroute from my son's dorm (Adams) to my girlfriends place in Middleton. Get rid of the Prius owners and the hard-core commies and Madison is a really nice place to live.
Also, my best friend graduated from UW with a degree in music performance. He raised a lot of eyebrows when he went to law school (MU) He is now a patent lawyer for the Navy but is still an artist.
Love your blog. Only in Madison could a Kennedy Democrat be considered right-wing.; 1/4/13, 2:19 AM
Unknown said...: thanks
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