solar prioritization

in

Winter has settled in but at least it's December now thus making it a little less ungodly though a little slower descent into it would've been nice. Alas, into the deep-end / through the ring of fire seems to be my usual way, and it's no different this year, learning the ins and outs of how to keep The Shed at least somewhat heated in its empty, sunless hours without draining my battery stack – though it has, somewhat, been easier the last couple days as there's finally, after a week of clouds, some sun to charge up the solar panels so I only have to plug into the grid once a day instead of (at least) twice.

(Still waiting on installation of four more panels but the Apple Creek Sun Gods bow to no schedule but their own: it’s “a week from now” on some universe, right?)

While I'm still considering closing off the vaulted ceiling for the season, I've settled on a solid all-around heater, a Dreo Electric wall heater that I've at 55-60 throughout (45 at night) that really does a nice job, even with the expanse of stained shiplap overhead. I keep a Dreo tower fan heater at my feet, the same one I used in The Paintshop, and it does make the floors a little less frigid.

But hey, if there's one thing the deep-end solar winter temperature exams have provided, it's project clarity: is what I'm going to work on worth working on in the comfy chill of The (winter) Shed? Whittled things down to three and a half projects from a nebulous six, the three point five (the half being AA Void cartoons) being those that give me the most creative pleasure and let me forget the extremities that are freezing off.

P.S. No newsletter today: there were things I wanted to do with it that I didn't get around to so I'm taking the month off and returning in January with a new form.

SILVERVIEW

in

Finished the final John le Carré novel written by David this morning, first written by Nick buried, somewhere, on the to-read stack. While it read as a coda to a 60+-year career and never reached the heights of his greatest – THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY, and THE CONSTANT GARDENER – it wasn't lacking in the character-driven pleasure of even the most middling le Carré efforts and was an enjoyable interlude between longer reads.

That said, one passage in particular packed a punch, a goodbye – not just from a character, but from a literary voice to his reader (or to his son, carrying on his tradition?):

"I am in the past now, Julian. I can do no harm. I wish you to know that, if occasion arises, you are free to discuss me. There are people we must never betray, whatever the cost. I do not belong in that category. I have no claim on you. I loved your father. Now give me your hand. So. When we return to the car park I shall say only a formal farewell to you."

recapturing

in

Windy, cold: hello, Winter. Efforts underway in earnest to either recapture my passion for writing or to let it go with happiness as The Swell Season said and move on. Swapping out the order of bloggy release – Herbie and I will appear in cartoon Informality form midday, at least until I change my mind and revert to the same old same old – is part of it, the opening salvo, mostly to churn something again, to feel my brain wrap around a subject or twenty, to reconcile itself in text – present goal being to make this space one of synthesis, first in text, then in cartoon form; the opposite wasn't working, nor was synthesizing solely in cartoon form. Perhaps this will be the right path for this moment until this moment passes which may be in a year or by midday when I realize that I’ve made a terrible mistake and cartoon Herbie and I take it out on myself.