Jonathan's blog

Last Sunday Jonathan was supposed to fly to New Jersey for a couple days of business meetings. He flew to Detroit planning to make a connection to Newark, but the North American blizzard of 2006 interfered. From the Wikipedia entry:

The Blizzard of 2006 was a nor'easter that began on the evening of February 11, 2006. It dumped heavy snow across the Northeast United States from Virginia to Maine through the early evening of February 12 and ended in Atlantic Canada on February 13. The major northeast cities from Baltimore to Boston received at least a foot of snow, with an all-time largest amount of 26.9 inches (68.3 cm) in New York City (the most since at least 1869, when records started being kept).

Jonathan spent most of the day in the Detroit airport until the last flight of the day to Neward was cancelled. Then the Birdwells picked him up, and he spent the night at their place. On Monday he caught a 5 PM flight to Newark.

Saturday evening Grandma and Grandpa B and Coby came up to babysit and spend the night. Saturday night, Lisa and Jonathan went on Chippewa Nature Center's Valentine's Snowshoe Hike and Dessert. It was fun to go snowshoeing, but I'm sure it would have been more so if there had been more than just a few inches of snow on the ground. We had cheesecake and cookies for dessert. From an article in the Midland Daily News:

...14 couples participating in the Nature Center's Valentine's Snowshoe Hike and Dessert, where couples donned snowshoes and traversed the trails around the center. Couples trudged through a small amount of snow cover on a twilight hike. The shoes weren't needed for navigation, just for fun. On the hike, the full moon obscured by clouds emitted a soft glow onto the white trails. Guides and hikers tried calling owls, but the nocturnal birds seemed otherwise occupied, and didn't respond. Indoors after the hike, candles took over for the moon, providing a romantic atmosphere for a quiet dessert.

A history of Valentine's Day from the February 14 The Writer's Almanac:

Every February florists in the United States import several million pounds of roses from South America. About thirty-six million boxes of chocolates will be given as gifts today. The holiday comes, in part, from the ancient Romans' holiday honoring Juno, the goddess of women and marriage, on the night before the Feast of Lupercalia. Roman girls would put slips of paper with their names on them into a clay jar, and the boys would choose their partner for the festival by taking a slip from the jar. This was one of the few times girls and boys were allowed to socialize, and the dancing and games often evolved into courtship and marriage. Tradition has it that Valentine's Day as we know it began sometime in the middle of the third century. Claudius II of Rome was waging several wars and needed to recruit more soldiers for his armies. He thought that many men were reluctant to join because they didn't want to leave their wives and families, and so he temporarily banned engagements and marriages. Saint Valentine was working as a priest at the time and he and his partner Saint Marius broke the law and secretly married couples in small, candlelit rooms, whispering the ceremonial rites. Eventually Saint Valentine was caught and sentenced to death. While awaiting his punishment he would talk with the young daughter of the prison guard whose father allowed her to visit occasionally. Saint Valentine was killed on February 14, 269 A.D., but he had left a note for the guard's daughter, signed, "Love from your Valentine."

by Nancy Henry from Hard, © MuscleHead Press, as featured in the February 11 The Writer's Almanac:

People who take care of people get paid less than anybody people who take care of people are not worth much except to people who are sick, old, helpless, and poor people who take care of people are not important to most other people are not respected by many other people come and go without much fuss unless they don't show up when needed people who make more money tell them what to do never get shit on their hands never mop vomit or wipe tears don't stand in danger of having plates thrown at them sharing every cold observing agonies they cannot tell at home people who take care of people have a secret that sees them through the double shift that moves with them from room to room that keeps them on the floor sometimes they fill a hollow no one else can fill sometimes through the shit and blood and tears they go to a beautiful place, somewhere those clean important people have never been.

It bugs me that political pressure is being wielded so prominently against the scientists at NASA. From a NY Times article by Andrew Revkin titled "A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA":

George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said. Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted. The resignation came as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was preparing to review its policies for communicating science to the public. The review was ordered Friday by Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, after a week in which many agency scientists and midlevel public affairs officials described to The New York Times instances in which they said political pressure was applied to limit or flavor discussions of topics uncomfortable to the Bush administration, particularly global warming. Mr. Deutsch, 24, was offered a job as a writer and editor in NASA's public affairs office in Washington last year after working on President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural committee, according to his résumé. No one has disputed those parts of the document. A copy of Mr. Deutsch's résumé was provided to The Times by someone working in NASA headquarters who, along with many other NASA employees, said Mr. Deutsch played a small but significant role in an intensifying effort at the agency to exert political control over the flow of information to the public. Such complaints came to the fore starting in late January, when James E. Hansen, the climate scientist, and several midlevel public affairs officers told The Times that political appointees, including Mr. Deutsch, were pressing to limit Dr. Hansen's speaking and interviews on the threats posed by global warming.