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2.12.2007

a secondary low

I grew up in a house with a thermometer outside the kitchen window and a barometer in the entrance hall. Suffice is to say weather was often a topic of discussion, particular where my father was concerned. We got reports of extreme temperatures on mornings my father got up ahead of the family. “It was five below when I got up to let out the dog this morning.” That kind of thing. More mysterious were his discourses on high and low pressure systems. The interest was scientific rather than conversational filler. Like so many things in life, I wish I’d paid more attention, I wish I’d listened to what my father tried to teach me about barometric pressure, instead of looping that adolescent interior chant of boring, boring, boring. Days like today remind me I’ve been meaning to buy a barometer. I’d like to find one that looked like the one we had in our front hallway, a round wooden one, most likely cherry, with a gold details and, I’m guessing here, an oyster pearl face.

All this barometers-on-the-brain business is due to the winter storm watch in effect here in the mid-Atlantic. The National Weather service predicts, in its language, that two low pressure systems will spread a variety of wintry precipitation into the region from Monday night (tonight) through Wednesday.

I went for a warm sweeps today, one week at the Karibea Amyris Hotel in Sainte-Luce, Martinique. Funnily, I almost went to Martinique once, with a couple named Bertrand and Martine, and we all thought that would have been be a hoot, Martine and all of us in Martinique, but it didn’t work out.

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