Posts Tagged → winter
Historic Harrisburg Home Tour another great success
Thank you to Historic Harrisburg.
Their annual home tour was once again a lot of fun. We get to walk around in the winter time’s crisp air, with a lot of interesting and friendly people. All of us care about our community, which is important. The homes are always interesting, and many are spectacular. The hosts are always gracious, sometimes with the aid of a glass of wine, or sometimes a bottle or two.
One thing that bears repeating from past posts about these tours is kudos to Alex Hartzler, who has invested in Harrisburg’s re-development for umpteen years. His effort has been as an investor expecting a return, yes, but let’s face it, his WCI Partners faces an uphill task. There is a lot of risk, and the possibility of very little ROI, if any. And yet they go house by house, block by obliterated, abandoned block, and breathe life into Pennsylvania’s capital city.
Another fact worth repeating from previous blog posts here is the important role of gay people, mostly gay men, in gentrification and the slow reclamation of abandoned neighborhoods everywhere, not the least of which are here in Harrisburg.
You have issues with gay people? OK, you are entitled to those feelings, as sexuality really is a private matter. And if your views are Biblical, as are mine, then again, you and I are entitled to our Biblical views on human activity. That said, in my practical observation gay men are an incredible force for economic development and neighborhood renewal, which are good things in my experience and in my view. And they make fantastic, fabulous neighbors. They tend to be neat, kind, friendly, law abiding, all of which are desirable qualities in a neighbor.
In fact, let’s face it, I am downright envious of gay men: They get to spend all their money and time on themselves.
And in that spending process they are helping rebuild Harrisburg into a prosperous and safe community. So I say Thank you, neighbors; I really do not care about your private lifestyle, and I really do appreciate your investment in my neighborhood and community. Everyone have a wonderful holiday season and a successful 2019.
Here are some photos from our tour.
A reclaimed row home in Mid-Town. 100 years ago, these homes were built of strong and attractive materials, with neat designs. These attributes are being re-discovered and appreciated by many Americans seeking close and walking communities.
My “Princess of Patience” in the Levine home in Uptown. What a woman. Until I returned from the mountains, she had been a hunting widow for many weeks.
This is why I will never have my home on the Historic Harrisburg tour: I would have to meticulously clean my lawn. Thank you to Ray Davis for making his home open.
Best time of the year
November through January is the best time of the year.
“It’s Christmas in November, December AND January,” say my fellow outdoorsmen.
From small game in late October to archery for deer, to the current bear season and then rifle season for deer next week, and then trapping season, it’s nonstop action.
With the nonstop political drama and annoying ankle biting behavior of certain partisans representing themselves as news reporters, we can all use a break. I have been enjoying a break. Friends and family hanging out together, eating together, hunting together, and then hanging out again in comfy relaxation, it’s really an unusually best time of the year.
Under no other circumstances can or will so many people take off from work, drive long distances, and see old friends, as we do now. Maybe a big high school reunion will draw in a lot of disparate people from far and wide. But we do this hunting bit every year.
Santa brought us snow early. The better to hunt and track in. The better to hover around a warm fire from. Thank you, Jolly old Chris Cringle!
Everyone enjoy your winter!
Kudos to Filson clothing
Filson is a clothing manufacturer in Seattle, making pretty much the most basic American clothing styles for the past 130 years.
Little has changed in their styles or fabrics. Boring? Maybe.
Flannel and wool shirts, wool and canvas coats and pants, wool long underwear, leather boots with wool insulation, tote and carry bags and purses, every item is made in America of virgin wool or different weights of canvas.
One short phrase describes Filson products: Brutally tough.
Or, “Last a lifetime.”
In an era of cheap Chinese crap and Asian sweatshop “designer” clothes, Filson stands alone, or probably alone. I am a consumer of top-quality outdoor clothing, and I cannot think of another manufacturer who makes anything like Filson’s clothing line.
Oh, sure, there are plastic and Gore Tex outdoor clothes galore. Eddie Bauer, LL Bean, Mountain Hard Wear, and others make some pretty good ones, which our family wears. Fleece coats, mountaineering parkas, super-sophisticated PhD plastic fiber clothes for the outdoor lifestyle. Some are married to goose down, which is genuinely warm.
But all of these synthetics catch on fire and turn the wearer into a large, running, screaming torch when exposed to flame. Or at the least they wilt, melt, smell very bad, and cease being useful when exposed to a camp fire hot enough to dry your damp undies and wet socks. In other words, the newfangled modern synthetics may weigh next to nothing and stop wind faster than a speeding bullet and locomotive, but they lack certain basic physical properties necessary to truly enjoy or survive the outdoors.
Wool and waxed heavy cotton canvas are nearly fireproof and can withstand tremendous force before tearing. Wool keeps the wearer warm even when wet. Yes, it is heavy compared to synthetics, but it is a lot quieter, actually it is silent, whereas even the best of synthetic fleece hunting clothes will leave a telltale “zip” sound when dragged across a sharp branch.
Filson forms a big part of my winter clothing selection. Mackinaw vests and coats of different colors and patterns form the core of the selection, and the double mackinaw coat in “Pennsylvania Tuxedo” red-and-black buffalo check plaid has kept me toasty warm in sub-zero temperatures day after day. This past week I wore the double mackinaw coat while flintlock hunting, and I never got cold. It was sub-zero every day.
Other wool clothes I wear are heavy camouflage Columbia hunting pants, Bass Pro Redhead heavy wool socks, Danner wool socks, knee-high SmartWool ski and hunting socks, and SmartWool long underwear. Yes, once in a while I break out the Eddie Bauer and Woolrich Adirondock plaid pants, jackets, and so on. They are real testaments to a world long gone, which dinosaurs like me cling to in misty eyed memories.
David Petzal is the gun writer for Field and Stream Magazine, and among many other witticisms and pithy one-liners, years ago he noted that all synthetic long underwear makes you smell like someone slaughtered a cow after a day, but wool long underwear can be worn for days without you or them being cleaned, and yet you don’t smell…too badly.
That’s the thing. Wool is natural. Like leather and fur, it is natural and fits the human body perfectly. We can sweat into wool for days on a hunt, and it just doesn’t smell bad. Oh, it may not smell fresh, but compared to the polypropylene synthetics, it does.
My Filson Mackinaw coat accompanies me on all my Adirondack wilderness hunts, serving as a blanket at night when the temperature inside the tent dips to 18 degrees. And yet after many years of being worn through thorn patches and rugged mountain brush, it shows zero signs of wear. That says it all.
Other favorites include the now discontinued styles of Tin Cloth logging jacket and Double Tin field coat, both of which I wear when hunting for small game in January and February, when thorns are a big part of the day. Some of these discontinued tin cloth coats have become collector’s items. Each one will last you your entire lifetime, and if you wax it at the end of the season, it will serve your kids, too.
So, kudos to Filson for making Best-quality, “old fashioned” clothing for a tech-happy generation. www.filson.com
Chapped hands? Recondition your winter boots
My hands have been badly chapped for weeks now. Outdoor work and play, and cold weather have chewed up the thumbs and finger tips on both my hands. You’d think I actually worked for a living to look at them.
This morning I was reminded about the best way to fix that chapped skin: Recondition leather work boots and hunting boots. Whether it’s Sno-Seal, Danner Boot Cream, or some other natural salve for dry leather, it also works healing wonders on the hands that apply it. And sitting by the warm fire helps, too.
Hunting season preparations – Xmas in July
Though hunting seasons may be many months away, the truth is that hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania hunters are quietly sorting out their plans far ahead of time. Doe tags, DMAP tags, licenses and berths in a Quebec hunting camp for black bear and caribou, a camping permit for an ADK wilderness…it is all lining up now across the state.
Summertime preparations for Fall and wintertime hunting activities are a sign that yet another round of sustainable, renewable economic development is upon us here. After all, hunting is a $2.8 billion industry (or business sector, or economic sector) in Pennsylvania. Hunters are a renewable, and sustainable source of income and economic activity, so long as they have places to hunt.
Longingly fondling old, trusted firearms and bows, sighting them in on the sitting room wall or at the range, hunters can already smell that clean air, feel that cool breeze upon the cheek, and hear dead leaves rustle under foot, if they but close their eyes and imagine it.
It is Christmas in July now, as hunters across the Commonwealth gear up, trim up, and make sure everything is in order for that best time of the year: Hunting season.
Warmer weather can’t come too soon
What began as a happy trip to the wood shed for a load of seasoned oak in the Fall is now a crabby trudge through deep snow and ice, a drudgery opposite the cheerfulness felt with the first flames to beat back Winter’s early chill.
Spring warmth cannot come too soon. Naturally, it will arrive, melt the Arctic snow cap occupying my lawn, and probably result in some Biblical flood carrying my home down river to the Chesapeake Bay.
Speaking of floods, and flood insurance, I am hopeful that the insane congresswoman Maxcine Waters will have her bizarre legislation permanently overturned, so that people can either afford to own their homes (something she is not familiar with or supportive of) or the Federal government will buy out the landowners so the societal costs and benefits are not concentrated on just the private property owners. Government cannot change the social contract in one week. Well, under liberals it can, of course. Let’s rephrase that: Government should not restructure the social contract in such a short time that private property owners see their investments destroyed overnight. That would be good government, something unknown to Maxcine Waters and her fellow liberals.
OK, belay that last “let it snow”
Like you and most everyone I know around Pennsylvania, I feel done with the snow. Yes, did I say “let it snow” a bunch yesterday? Well, that was then and this is now. Now, we are expecting another eight to twelve inches of snow in the next day. On top of the six to eight inches of hardened crust, ice, and snow already on the ground, another foot is going to keep spring from arriving for a long time.
This much snow puts a stranglehold on our business operations. Shuts down machinery. Trucks cannot pick up, guys cannot cut, or even drive their trucks, let alone get their machines moving.
What really is telling about this cold is that at home, we have burned a solid three-plus cords of seasoned oak firewood. We may be closing in on four burned to date. We have enough to take us into the end of the longest cold winter, but that just means more work felling, cutting, hauling, splitting, and stacking. You know the old saw — “Firewood warms ya twice.” You work hard making it, and then it warms you as a fire. Indeed.
Hold on there, fellow Pennsylvanians. Spring must be just around the corner. Just a few weeks from now, the air should be in the mid-forties, smelling slightly earthy and damp, and a robin here and there will join the cardinal in the back yard. Then you know relief is upon us. Hold on. You are in good company.
Burst pipes? You were in good company
Ten days ago, weather across the country was bitterly cold. Polar vortex, solar lull, regular winter weather…seems there’s a bunch of possible causes. One defining characteristic of that week-long deep freeze was the amount of burst pipes across the country, and around central Pennsylvania. Our home had burst pipes, and a property I manage had burst pipes, and the plumbers at both jobs told me they had spent days from six in the morning until late at night working on nothing but burst pipes. The big box stores were either short on or out of key plumbing components, which caused further delays in getting homes and businesses functioning again.
Which is all to say, I have never heard so many creative reports about where families washed their clothes and dishes. Many went to neighbors, friends, or nearby families. Some went to churches. Some used water from nearby creeks. As damaging as that freeze was, it only bolstered people’s spirit and resolve to carry on, and it cemented a feeling of community and caring among many people who normally just say “Hi” to each other coming home from work.
I found that refreshing.
Winter, I’ve just had it with you…
Normally I look forward to winter every year. Cooler temperatures, various hunting seasons, trapping, fall fly fishing to hungry trout that were laying low just weeks before….it’s probably my favorite time of year.
That said, I have just had it with winter this year. We have burned five cords of split oak firewood, which says something about how cold it was, and I am just tired of hauling wood.
Wearing wool keeps me warm and wool clothing usually comes in colors and tartans that you won’t find in other fabrics. Even when I am not out hunting, wool clothing reminds me of the season and is just so doggone warm. And now, I don’t want to see another wool shirt for a long, long time…
Snow in late March? OK, I recall casting a fly on the mid-April opening day of trout season about 28 years ago in Centre County, amid a snow squall that impeded view of the Royal Coachman that was so visible to the trout below. And my own wedding in March of 1993 happened on “the storm of the century,” which kept many of our guests and family from reaching the proceedings.
Those two events aside, I cannot think of another drawn out winter like this. Old Man Winter, I will not miss you.
Of Molotov cocktails and fishing expedition gaffes
It has been an interesting day today, at home and abroad.
Obama gave a bizarre speech in Israel, and Biden made yet another unbelievable gaffe. Who knew that an empty bottle and a fishing tool could become weapons, but here you have it.
Obama loaded his Jerusalem audience with ultra-leftists, most or all of whom did not stand to applaud when Obama stated that Israel has a right to exist. Throwing his second Molotov cocktail into the Middle East (the first one in Cairo that set off the Arab Winter), he declared that the bigoted Arabs bombing Israel are just like Canada next door to the US. Who knows what bizarre actions will follow. If the unrest across the Arab world is any indication, it’ll be ugly, violent.
Across the ocean and then back home, Joe Biden is still spending gobs of taxpayer money traveling about like an itinerant salesman, preaching gun confiscation, contrary to the US Constitution. Earlier, Biden spent over a million taxpayer dollars for just a night in Paris and a night in London. Apparently he thinks he is some sort of royalty, living the high life. Today, Biden said that former US Congresswoman Gabby Giffords had been “mortally wounded.” This is the same woman who is now advocating gun confiscation. Wounded terribly, awfully, tragically, yes. Mortally? Obviously not.
And that’s the problem with the Obama folks. What is obvious to so many other people is invisible to them. And the consequences of being wrong are enormous. But what me worry?