Blowing in the Wind

The Santa Ana winds are blowing through Southern California with a vengeance. The newscaster said these are the worst winds we’ve had in a decade. But then the news people always try to make things sound as bad as possible.

Some people call them the devil winds. They come from inland and the air they blow is so dry it makes your skin itch. Not only that, but they stir up the bad kind of ions. It’s easy to feel edgy and in a bad mood.

I had them blowing in the beginning of an old manuscript to set a creep tone. My character walked out into a parking lot at night as the dry wind whipped around scraping the palm fronds scrap together so they made an eerie sound. She walked right into a mugging and despite her heels and celery green suit with a pencil skirt, plowed into the middle of it. Of course, she saved the day – and ruined her clothes. BTW, this character, Casey Feldstein, ditched that manuscript and jumped over to my new series.

There is a real reason to feel edgy when these winds blow. A careless spark can lead to an unstoppable wildfire in the mountains.

As I’m writing this, a wind gust whined through my window. The lime tree is bending and shaking for dear life and dropping it’s old fruit.

The sky looks different. There is only a hint of clouds, but the blue is watered down and it’s as though all the dust in the air has put a filter over the sun.

Outside the streets are littered with fallen trees. Palm fronds have bombarded our roof all afternoon. I have cabin fever from being inside all day.

A memory connected with these winds surfaces. My son was small and carryable. We were going through a shopping center parking lot, when all of a sudden the giant sign above the grocery store in front of us began to break apart and huge pieces flew off into the air. Where were they going to land? Where was the safe place to walk to get away from them? I remember bending forward to shield my son and trying to get to a covered area, as the pieces of sign landed around us. Miraculously they all missed hitting us.

Maybe the memory of that is why I don’t feel like going outside today.

Have you ever had weather related scares?

December 6, I am going to be interviewed by Zontee Hou on the Lions Brand podcast. http://yarncraft.lionsbrand.com/

More rapid than eagles: through a wormhole

If you're reading this, say Thank You to Cindy Cullen for posting for me. I'm over the middle of the country by now, on my way to Boston. Flying around so close to Christmas makes me think of Santa and the incredible trip he makes every year.

There's a lot of talk going around about the physics of Christmas and how it's impossible for Santa to get his job done.

They point out that there are 2.2 billion children in the world and even at one toy each, we have something like 400,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second to get around world in one night.

A simple calculation shows that Santa has 1/1000th of a second to pull up on a roof, park his sleigh, hop out, climb down the chimney, figure out who's naughty and nice, distribute the presents, eat a snack, and say Ho, Ho, Ho, all without waking the household. Then he goes back up the chimney, gets back into the sleigh, dusts off his suit, and moves on to the next house.

Not just exhausting, but physically impossible.

Even though there's not a lot of sleigh traffic up there, it's not a feasible trip.

But the naysayers are way behind the times. Have they never heard of worm holes? Wormholes are features of space-time that allow a shortcut through the universe.

Imagine you're standing in a long line at the post office. You're at one end of the room and the clerk is at the other. Now imagine a piece of paper with a stick figure representing you at one corner, and a figure at the diagonally opposite corner to represent the clerk. Fold the paper so that your stick figure is on top of the clerk's.

See? You've just taken a shortcut to the head of the line.

That's what Santa does. With a little math and a dash of relativity theory we can show that, in fact, with every stop, Santa can come out of the chimney before he gets in!

No problem making all those stops.

So, yes, Virginia, relatively speaking, Santa can do it!

Now if only my pilot could find the right wormhole to get me to Logan Airport in the next 1/1000th of a second.

Keeping Calm with Crochet

Some people think of October as fall, but in Southern California it’s fire season. The Santa Ana winds come in and blow at huge speeds and the humidity goes to nothing. That’s exactly what happened last Sunday. The only difference was it was a cold wind. A fire started in the wilderness area of the San Gabriel mountains and the wind began to spread it toward homes around the northeast area of the San Fernando Valley.

Monday morning the wind was even worse. It grabbed a heavy outdoor umbrella I’d folded down and sent it crashing into the lime tree. The winds always stir up trouble. There was even a news story about how in the past, that if you could prove there were Santa Anas blowing when you committed a crime, you could get off. Kind of the wind made me do it, I guess. For sure the wind makes everyone uneasy. I have heard that these dry powerful winds stir up the wrong kind of ions. The opposite of the good ones you feel by the ocean or a waterfall.

Palm fronds broke off the tall palm tree in the front yard and bounced off the roof into the backyard. Dust and debris mixed with ash from the fire and spread over the outdoor furniture. The air had the pungent smell of smoke and had an odd cast to it.

Another fire had started. This time much closer, directly north of us in an area called Porter Ranch. I know the area exactly. It’s on a ridge above the Valley floor and where my Joann’s superstore is. There are lots of newer houses surrounded by the brush covered Santa Susanna mountains.

All the regular TV shows were pre empted and I sat glued to the TV, watching as reporters in yellow fireman coats and goggles tried to interview people being evacuated from their homes. A lot of the people were dressed in work attire and had rushed home when they heard about the fire to get their pets, pictures and papers.

The wind was ferocious, sending burning embers everywhere spreading the fire. It jumped six lanes of the 118 freeway and the fire officials started talking about not being able to stop it and that it might burn all the way to the ocean some 20 or so miles away.

We weren’t directly threatened, though when the wind is like that you never know what will happen. I had a headache and was tense. There was only one thing that got me through the day.

Crocheting.

I had started making a scarf from a pattern I’d seen in a magazine. The sport weight yarn was nice to work with and the pattern simple to follow. As I sat glued to the TV, I moved through row after row of the scarf.

There were warnings that the wind was going to get worse overnight, but luckily that never materialized and it actually died down, so they were able to do water drops from helicopters all night. By morning the firefighters had begun to get some control.
I went up to Joann’s Super Store on Friday and passed only one fire truck, but a lot of burned hillsides. I drove on the freeway that the fire had jumped. The people evacuated are back in their homes. There were some homes lost, but luckily fewer than first reported.

When leaves turn red in Southern California, it’s because they’re on fire.