An Unlucky Day?

I sincerely hope today has not been an unlucky day for you. Of course, I understand that waking up this morning to several inches of wet, heavy, soggy snow and a day of mixed rain/snow showers isn't exactly good luck for anyone. But all things considered, aside from the weather, I hope your day was uneventful.

I have always been quite aware of Friday the 13th being unlucky. My mother dreaded whenever the calendar showed the number 13 on a Friday. She was generally uneasy about the number 13, especially if there happened to be 13 at a dinner table. Or any other table. She didn't make a big thing out of it, but if it happened during family get-togethers, my cousins and I would find ourselves relegated to a card table in the kitchen. When I was very young, that was always more fun than eating with the adults, anyway. 

My Scottish aunts were all a bit superstitious, so no wonder my mother, the next to youngest in a family of eight, picked up some of their quirky beliefs. After those family dinners, usually the menfolks would head out onto the porch or into another room, while the women sat around the table and told stories in their thick, sometimes comical Scots dialect. The ladies sipped their tea and when they reached the bottom (they all made tea with loose tea leaves, never tea bags), one by one, they would turn their cup upside down in the saucer, turn it three times clockwise and pass it to Jessie, or "Jace" in Scots dialect. She would peer into the cup, turning it in her hands, and finally would begin telling what she saw - a trip, troubled times ahead, a happy event, or on rare occasions, she'd set the cup down on its saucer and say bluntly, "I dinnae see anything." She was quite dramatic.

My generation - at least some of my cousins and myself, understood most of what they were saying and I remember being impressed with what she told her sisters. We would sometimes have tea, which none of us really liked, just so she could tell our fortunes. I understood her  thick Scots dialect, but I could never master speaking Scots myself.

I don't remember that my mother made a really big thing out of most of her superstitions, but I think she was always suspicious of Friday the 13th. And of course, she wasn't alone. Hotels don't list a 13th floor - you'll never see it on an elevator panel or in hotel stairwells. People don't want to BE on the 13th floor. So if you have a touch of triskaidekaphobia, you won't be reminded of it in a high rise hotel and most other tall buildings - at least in the U.S. The Otis Elevator Company reports that 80-90% of elevators do not have a 13th floor on their selection panels.

When I looked it up, I found that the superstitions about the number 13 probably had biblical roots - the Last Supper, etc.

Back to more practical things - I heard today that Ray Bothfeld, who was severely injured in a farm tractor accident on his farm in Cabot recently, has been moved to the Fanny Allen facility in Winooski, Vermont. He is making progress, but still has a very long road ahead of him. We wish him the best - he is young and strong, and friends tell me he has a great attitude - all of which he'll need to draw on in the coming months, I'm sure. 

Our weather tonight is in between rain and whatever comes next. We've had rain most of the day - I measured 1.63 inches this morning, and there have been showers all day. Now the temperature has dropped from near 40 to about 24F, so everything is turning to ice. It will not be pretty as lumps of slush turn rock solid and wet roads become icy race tracks. Our road has been sanded - but in some spots the sand may have been washed away by the rain, and those spots will be treacherous as they freeze. So, be careful walking or driving, and please stay off the pond ice. It is not safe. There is still a large amount of warm water pouring into the pond from the melting hillsides and today's showers, weakening the ice everywhere.Be safe - stay off the ice.