We Have Obviously Angered the Weather Gods

I keep asking God to make it summer, but He seems to have more important things to do than worry about the weather  ;-).  So I decided to find some gods whose whole existence is about the weather to see what the problem might be.

 

As you can see from this picture, we must have done something to anger Boreas, the Greek god of of the north wind, who is also called the cold breath of winter.  Or maybe the problem is that we insulted Skadi, the Norse goddess of winter and hunting. It might even be as simple as the fact that we have disregarded the power of Jack Frost.  But whoever we insulted, they are dumping snow all over us.

So right now, we need to start doing whatever we can to appease the summer gods, and beg their presence.

 

We have many choices!  There is Aten, an Egyptian sun god.  There is also an African sun god named Ra (I always thought he was Egyptian.  See what you can learn from Google).

 

Sekhmet is an Egyptian sun goddess,  Theia is an Greek Titan goddess in charge of the shining light of the clear blue sky (hopefully that is a sky without snow).  There is also Utu, a Sumerian sun god. The Celts had a sun god named Lugh, and the Greeks had a god named Zephyrus who was in charge of the wind and known as the god of spring breezes.  

It doesn’t matter which of these gods we do sun dances for (they’re all myths anyway, right),  soon the winter gods will be vanquished and the summer ones will reign again!

The Year In Sports

I went out to run this afternoon, and thought about what other things happen today.  It’s Goundhog Day (I think he saw his shadow), The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, and SuperBowl Sunday. I got to thinking about how we measure of the passing of time:  seasons, liturgical year, sports seasons, school year, calendar year, heating degree days. For so many people the most important thing about today is the super bowl.  The only interest I have in most organized sports, is how big games affect the number of people in the grocery store.  So I decided to look at sports seasons as they relate to the seasons on the trail.

 

Baseball spring training starts early in February.  By this time of year, trail runners and mountain bikers have had more than enough of winter.  This season can bring anything from beautiful early spring days, to mud, to the heartbreak of a blizzard! Last year  we had a huge blizzard on February 9th, and the Blizzard of 78 was also in February.  But there have been February days that a runner only needs shorts and a light fleece.

 

Regular baseball season runs from April to September, the best time of the year.  The worst of the mud is over, the days are warm and long, and then everything gets hot and dry…love it!  Even the post season, in October,  can be pretty nice, although there is a history of both hurricanes and ice storms at this time of year.

 

Hockey gets the wrong end of the year, with the regular season running from October to April (the exact opposite of baseball).  Sometimes we have nice days in the late fall, and there can be a thaw in January.  But mostly this is the time of the year that everybody hates (except for maybe skiers and hockey fans?).

 

Basketball shares the same season as hockey…the yucky weather.  Both of these sports are usually played indoors, no surprise there.

Football season runs from September to January and is followed by the Super Bowl which falls today (Seems like a short season compared to the other sports.  I wonder if they get payed less for playing less?) Today’s game will be played in New Jersey.  You have to wonder why they picked a cold place when there are so many stadiums in warm places?

 

This is what the woods looked like today.  It was 49 degrees around 1PM, and started to rain while I was out running.  Overall, it was a pretty good day to be out.  I hope the weather holds for the people sitting out in the stadium tonight.  Well, at least they will be outside 😉