This was the week of the strong winds, down from the Cascades into the Seattle area. Large trees broke or tipped over and took out power for thousands of homes and businesses. The idea of not having electricity for days is something that doesn’t occur here on the east side of the mountains.
The problem began late evening Tuesday and on Sunday morning there are still about 28,000 places with no electricity. That’s down from many thousands on Wednesday. In addition to the power issues, there are trees on houses, over roads, and blocking driveways. Most of the big problems will be solved by Monday. Interestingly, it appears that Thanksgiving Day and a few days after will have the nicest weather in weeks.
Here, I had snow overnight. Mostly gone now with a drizzle at 37°F.
Related to trees: The twisting beams supporting my decks were replaced this week. Of the many, two twisted badly. The image below left, shows the end of one. Middle image shows the new look. The beam twisted so much it was splitting the post to which it was attached with long (stout) screws. The other end was pushing out on another vertical post.
The other deck had a similar but lesser problem. Two short beams that met over a center post have been replaced by one long one and heavy steel brackets have been added to help keep things in place. That’s shown in the right side image.
The College of the Sciences at CWU entertains grade school kids and their parents with an annual event called “Nature of Night”. It is promoted in the schools for many years – that’s why I never heard about it. This year, via a connection to the local Audubon group, I volunteered to cut bird silhouettes on Thursday and help with the event on Saturday. 
The birds were taped to the ceiling of large room (dark inside) and we led groups in with flashlights to view “the overhead migrations” underway in the night sky. Kids were given flashlights and they were asked to find the birds and count them. Meanwhile the leaders could talk about the shapes of wings, tails, and the thousands of birds migrating south. Back at the Audubon table there were cut-outs of bird faces (owls mostly) for anyone to color and make a mask. We volunteers cut out the image, the eyes, and holes for an elastic (head) band. There were several types of different sizes to match the width between the eyes of little to larger faces.
A dozen CWU groups had tables and rooms to allow the folks to learn of the night time activities of other critters, and different environments; jungle, desert, polar, rivers. A man with a Cosmos display was there and the astronomy club had scheduled trips to the planetarium – in a different building. Folks started coming at 10 AM and the place swarmed until about 2 PM. There was a room with pizza, snacks, and drinks for the volunteers.
Friday noon was a monthly luncheon that I attend, mostly secretaries and staff. This time there were two main topics. One being the care of elderly – several folks were involved with parents or others needed care. And Ruth H., the person that started these gatherings, fell a couple of weeks ago and broke a hip. She is near 90 and probably will not be returning to her long-time home.
The second topic was the in-progress contraction of the University brought about by fewer students. There is a Covid/pandemic aspect to this but, also, a general demographic part – fewer collage age folks and fewer attending colleges.
Retiring faculty are not being replaced and very preliminary talks of combining programs have started. Faculty is adapting by being flexible in adjusting current degree requirements. One thing being tried is to eliminate departmental secretaries/office-managers. No one seems sure of how this will work. Perhaps, there will be a central phone service for a group of departments. There always has been a general phone number for the university but whether that office could handle all communications hasn’t been tried. There won’t be a person to meet & greet someone coming to a department. All this is in progress. The current Geography secretary is in our group. She has been scheduled to retire at the end of December. With no one to replace her and a new academic quarter beginning with classes on January 7th she is staying through January. Spring quarter classes start on April 1st.
Our group’s next luncheon is on January 24. News update then.
Keeping Track
on the Naneum Fan
John