News, in Latin, from a Finnish radio broadcast. What a weird world we live in. [Aside: I really do firmly believe Latin should be required in schools.]

The imaginary city.

From the Sunday Globe Ideas section (which I’m reading online, given the blizzard has made paper delivery impossible): “the conventional wisdom about establishing the run turns out to be a classic case of misinterpreting cause and effect…. Even if you don’t get too many yards on the ground early, say most analysts, winning teams need to keep running to wear the defense down.” Still, isn’t this kind of obvious? Baseball has so much more opportunity to mis-interpret numbers, or to find new significant numbers. I guess it’s why it’s been keeping me coming back for the past few years, and football hasn’t.

Now that it’s light, here are some more pictures of the ongoing blizzard. The lovely one through the door is a Terri Wise original.

Among the documentation that I have with my press is The Printer’s Guide, published by The (defunct since 1990) Kelsey Company of Meriden, Connecticut. You may have guessed by now that I very much aspire to be the guy in the bowtie with the pipe.

It’s from a different world: “…good results can easily be obtained by following these directions. If you have any difficulty, write to us explaining the trouble fully and clearly” (page 4).

The only photo I managed to get of the blizzard in progress that was halfway decent was this one. The snow isn’t really sticking to anything because it’s too windy. But it’s drifted to about a foot deep on the sidewalk, and if the forecasts are to be trusted, we’re only about 1/5 of the way into this.

I can’t believe I left my Galaxie 500 cd at work, because right about now would be a good time to hear snowstorm.

Since we’re expecting a blizzard, it seemed like a good time to point out this excellent museum of snowflake photographs; more details here.

Terri and I went to Letterpress Things in Chicopee, Mass. today. Very glad we did. The owner/operator John Barrett was a gracious host and easily spent over an hour teaching us about the basics of printing and the basic things we need. As I suspected, I have almost all I need to get started, and he gave me some good leads on where to find the things he doesn’t stock, or, like rollers, that are harder to find.

His space is a floor of an old paper factory, and he has dozens of old presses, and all sorts of various equipment that he’s purchased from closing print shops. But the big attraction is definitely John’s storehouse of information and his interest in helping newbies like myself.

Unfortunately, the snow started a little earlier than expected, and we had to head back home before we managed to get to Lenox, Mass., to go to the yarn shop Terri wanted to go to. Well, there will be other trips to Western Mass. in the near future, I’m guessing.

The ride back was another pretty snowy drive; not as bad as our snowy trip back from Portsmouth last week. But it was also quite pretty.

The pictures below are from the snow a few days ago. There’s supposed to be another foot or two tomorrow. After years of unsatisfying snowfall in Boston, we’re finally getting our share.

In preparation for being snowed in with my honey, I’m envisioning renting Dr. Zhivago. I know Julie Christie’s perfect tan is pretty un-Russian, but it’s still the all-time best romantic snow movie.