Lazy Sunday CCXCV: The Bitter, Wretched Cold

19 January 202517 January 2025 The Portly Politico8 Comments

It has been cold here in South Carolina, which is a rare treat. I like the cold, but even this weather is getting a tad ridiculous.

As readers can imagine, I spend a great deal of time inside my own head, and am constantly in dialogue with myself (it still blows my mind that some people don’t have an internal dialogue or monologue). That dialogue is often out loud. It also consists mostly of me saying silly things that amuse me. One of them is a pet phrase that I’ll utter on particularly cold days: “The bitter, wretched cold.” I’ll tug my collar or coat tighter around me, and I saw it with a slight British accent, like I’m a character in a Dickensian novella. I also roll the “r” in wretched. The whole thing is a quite amusing, at least to me.

To embrace the frostiness of this weekend—and the chance of snow!—I thought I’d take a moment to look back at some cold-related posts of yesteryear:

“Stone Cold Sunday” – an old post from 2019 in which I write about Roger Stone and his sartorial wisdom.
“Make Greenland American” – my pro-expansionist (in the Western Hemisphere) post endorsing Trump’s desire to obtain Greenland from Denmark.
“TBT^2: More Mountain Musings” (and “TBT: More Mountain Musings” and “More Mountain Musings“) – more musings about the mountains; I miss them!

Stay warm out there, my friends, and pull those collars tight against the bitter, wretched cold.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT^2: The Joy of Spring

20 April 202316 April 2023 The Portly Politico12 Comments

Spring has sprung, and it’s been a surprisingly mild one so far. It’s going to get brutally hot soon, I am sure, but South Carolina has enjoyed a bout of good weather.

It reminds me of the notorious Spring of 2020, right at the dawn of The Age of The Virus. It seemed at the time—and I still believe this to be true—that God Delivered us good weather at that time when everything remotely social had to be done outdoors (unnecessarily, as we’ve since learned).

I now find all The Virus stuff to be endlessly boring and tedious, but it’s worth remembering how bad it was—and how totally unhinged our reaction to it was. I can excuse some of the hysteria of the early days, but soon an entire regime of busybodies and medical “experts” (usually nurses twerking on TikTok) grew up to make the rest of miserable.

In reflecting on that beautiful Spring of 2020, we would do well to remember the tyranny that bloomed along with its flowers—a tyranny we’re now all-too-quick to forget.

With that, here is 28 April 2022’s “TBT: The Joy of Spring“:

TBT: The Weather

29 September 202226 September 2022 The Portly Politico5 Comments

Hurricane Ian is swirling about, sending everything and everyone into a tizzy (folks in Florida, please be safe). It’s also thrown a windy wrench into my schedule, which was already planned down to the minute for nearly every day this week.

Well, no use crying over spilt rainwater. I’m thankful for the relative safety of the inland, and that we live in a time when we have some advanced warning about the impending meteorological apocalypses that routinely batter us.

This hurricane aside, we’ve been enjoying some pleasant weather here in South Carolina—it almost feels like fall! The mornings have been crisp and cool, and even required a light jacket one day last week. Here’s hoping the sweater weather descends soon.

Here’s hoping my readers in Florida and along the coastal regions of the Southeast are safe. Audre, be sure to batten down the hatches.

With that, here is 29 September 2021’s “The Weather“:

TBT: The Joy of Spring

28 April 202224 April 2022 The Portly Politico6 Comments

Spring has sprung here in South Carolina, with some gorgeous weather. It’s actually a bit chilly this morning, but overall there have been some warm—even borderline hot—days, with plenty of bees a-buzzing. One managed to get into my house, but I was able to capture him in a Tupperware container and release him back to the world, though I flung the container as I opened it and dashed in the other direction—yikes!

Just like two years ago, my flowerbeds are 80% weeds, 20% plants I want growing there, so I’ve got to get on that this weekend. The relentless growth of dandelions makes it a Sisyphean task, but I must endeavor to do better in my humble flowerbeds this year.

It’s also the downward slope to summer vacation. At this point, there’s probably another couple of weeks of actual learning to be had, then a leisurely drift into exam review week and exams themselves. I’m also cooking up the 2022 iteration of the TJC Spring Jam, which I might make into a recital for my students this year.

Two years ago, during The Age of The Virus, we enjoyed an unusually long, mild spring in South Carolina. Readers who don’t live in the South might not appreciate the significance of that: we typically get a couple weeks—maybe three—of proper spring weather before summer dominates everything in a veil of humidity and heat, refusing to lift its terrible, sweaty fist until sometime around Thanksgiving. At a time when every remotely communal activity had to be done outdoors, a mild spring was a Godsend.

Indeed, I think it was a literal one: I really do think God sent us that cooler weather so we could still be together during that difficult time.

Regardless, hot or cold, I’m glad to be alive, and that The Age of The Virus—at least for now—seems to be an increasingly distant memory.

With that, here is 11 May 2020’s “The Joy of Spring“:

The Weather

29 September 202128 September 2021 The Portly Politico63 Comments

From the title, you’re probably thinking, “wow, he’s really reaching for content now—he’s literally writing a post about the weather.” Well, yes, it’s a bit of a stretch for a blog post, but while enjoying the absolutely glorious weather this past weekend, I began contemplating the topic. It’s perhaps not quite as trite as we think.

Lazy Sunday CXXVI: Joy, Part I

15 August 202112 August 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

It occurred to me that I have written a great number of posts with “the joy of” in the title. As such, why not go back and explore these joyful posts?

I kicked around the idea of doing a Lazy Sunday about the seasons, but apparently I have never written “The Joy of Summer” and “The Joy of Winter.” Summer in South Carolina is a brutal hellscape of humidity and venomous insects, so there’s not much joyful other than two months off. I much prefer winter—the bugs are dead—so I’m not sure why I haven’t gotten around to that one yet.

So I got in the two “glamor” seasons, spring and autumn, and tossed in one about coffee:

“The Joy of Autumn” (and “TBT: The Joy of Autumn“) – Autumn is great: candy apples, Halloween, festivals. There’s a lot of joy to go around.
“The Joy of Spring” – Spring is like autumn, but with more bees and flowers. I wrote this post during the lovely, long spring of 2020, which I took to be a God-given reprieve from The Age of The Virus, especially given that everything remotely sociable had to be done outdoors.
“The Joy of Coffee” – This post was a surprise hit. Apparently, there is a huge overlap between blog readers (and bloggers) and coffee consumption, based on the likes and views this one received. Also, what’s better than a hot cup of coffee on a frosty winter’s morn?

Here’s hoping these posts bring you some joy. And, remember: winter is coming. Much like a George R. R. Martin novel, it’s going to be awhile before it arrives.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

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TBT: Tarantulas and the Hygge

24 September 202022 September 2020 The Portly Politico2 Comments

The weather in the mountains this past weekend was delightfully chilly, and it seems the cold up on Mount Mitchell has blown down into South Carolina. In short, the weather is perfect—warm afternoons, and crisp, autumnal mornings. I’ve been taking a cup of half-caff coffee in the afternoons after getting home from work and watering the garden, and it’s been glorious sitting on the porch and enjoying the coolness of the evening.

That first nip in the air is a sign that the hygge—the Danish concept of contented, warm coziness—is near. It’s a time for bundling up and staying warm in old quilts with good books—and good company! Food tastes better, coffee seems more satisfying, and my mind feels more alert and alive this time of year.

There’s also college football, which is nice, too—and Halloween!

So it seemed like a good time to look back to a post from March of this year, during South Carolina’s unusually cool—and long—spring. This post, “Tarantulas and the Hygge,” explored what I called “the weird side of the Internet,” traveling “down one of those byways of oddity.”

The Joy of Spring

11 May 202011 May 2020 The Portly Politico2 Comments

Seasons in South Carolina are not the stately procession of one phase of life from one to another, with flowers poking through snow, or a crisp autumnal chill sneaking into the night air in late September. Instead, it’s as hot on Halloween as it is on the Fourth of July (well, maybe just a tad cooler, but you’d never know from the humidity). I often joke with out-of-Staters that we get about two weeks of spring and two weeks of fall, with about nine months of summer and two months of winter—and even the winter is interspersed with some summery days.

This year, South Carolina has been blessed with an unusually long and mild spring. It’s 11 May, and I’m still wearing sweatshirts in the mornings. We had a brief foretaste of the long summer a couple of nights last week, when the cloying thickness of summertime humidity hung menacingly in the air—the threat of summer’s oppression. But God has seen fit to grant us at least a few more days of mild springtime.

The Joy of Autumn

18 November 201917 November 2019 The Portly Politico12 Comments

It was a hot and muggy Halloween here in South Carolina (with tornado warnings mid-trick-or-treating!), but my complaints about the season’s distinct lack of autumnality must have worked: we’ve had a crisp, cold week. Indeed, in true South Carolina fashion, we’ve largely skipped autumn and have headed directly to winter (of course, don’t be surprised if it’s 80 degrees on Thanksgiving Day).

I’m getting excited for Thanksgiving. It’s been busy at work lately, and the natives are restless. Teachers know when students need a break—there’s a weirdness to the atmosphere, and you can almost feel the kids clawing at the walls. As a Leftie British colleague of mine once quipped, “You Americans think it’s a good idea to have eighteen weeks of school without a break.” Usually I’m not one for foreign interlopers critiquing our awesome country, but even a progressive Briton is right now and then.

Mainly, though, I’m excited for some downtime with the family, with lots of filling food and cold, crisp days. Sweater weather, as the vapid co-eds call it, has arrived, and I welcome it happily. Like the vapid co-eds, I like all the pumpkin spice stuff, too.

SubscribeStar Saturday: Homecoming Week

2 November 20192 November 2019 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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It was a wild Halloween Week for yours portly. Halloween itself saw a tornado warning while trick-or-treating with the little ones, before the typically muggy weather turned into a frosty All Saints’ Day overnight. Brrrr!

Meteorological phenomena aside, it was also Homecoming Week at the little private school where I teach. That brings its own mix of fun and tornadoes.

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The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Tag: weather