24 Comments

I've grown to really love the cold too--and not the least of which is predicated on the need for warmth that it brings, the reason to turn on the fire (yes, sadly, it's a gas fire). But think about the costs of fuel as you do. Fascinated by those small windows, the intense heat of those houses. I visited Kaktovik once many years ago on north of the arctic circle and what I will always remember is that it was -20 but every building I entered was super super hot. Women in tank tops and shorts. I wondered about that practice, and cultural expectations for what 'indoor temperature' is. Also am a wee bit starstruck that Marina Tsvetaeva was your stepmother's great-aunt! Such an incredible poet.

Expand full comment

It's been colder than usual for longer and much earlier here in the Puget Sound area. I realize that compared to Montana and other places, it would still feel pretty balmy. Because I am who I am, I just did a comparison of the low temps on my weather station in November for the past two years, and it's not my imagination. In 2021, a total of 7 nights with lows in the 30s, and one in the twenties. This year - 17 nights in the 30s, and 10 in the 20s! No wonder I'm cold all the time, the daytime temps are shifted lower as well. The room I work in all day is on the north side of the house and these days it always feels cold. I add layers, and keep reminding myself this is nothing compared to people in other areas of the world.

Thanks for a glimpse into a very cold place. I love those houses and their clever windows. Everything in this country is so cookie-cutter and not necessarily appropriate for the local climate.

Expand full comment

John Haines book is a classic, in touch with the place that claimed him as few are. I think of how the homestead was heated; the wood we gathered for fires, and the coal - enough in the ground, even the homesteaders knew, to sustain twenty generations. But nothing can sustain industrial obeisance to greed. The zero sum game was introduced by those whose need is to push everything and everyone else aside; generosity is not recognized.

Expand full comment
Dec 11, 2022·edited Dec 11, 2022Liked by Antonia Malchik

Your writing leads me to unexpected places. I like to think the diversity of an audience can lead to some interesting dialog. I am a prisoner of my scientific background. I like the way your writing steers my thoughts in ways I thought I'd forgotten. For me, what you write about returns me to the inevitable challenge of what the last 500 years of modernity has brought. In the end, it is all about entropy. Each bit of material in the ground, now becoming a sexy term ala sequestration, is a candidate for the increase in entropy. Taking a perfectly stable bit of oil or coal or wood and burning it drives the formerly predicable solid, liquid or gas and places it in the upper atmosphere in a state of liberated disorder (and high entropy / disorder).

It is not a statistically different comparison based upon efficiency. The truth is burning a lump of coal is not reversible. The unfortunate laws of thermodynamics mean that to take the component CO2 gas and put it back will require EVEN MORE ENERGY than we got to warm our skin. The only answer to this seemingly intractable problem is to find ways to do stuff outside the closed system of our lowly planet. That answer is certainly solar power of all sorts. It is the only free resource we can likely use to fuel our lifestyle, even if we wear more sweaters.

As you know, you and I share the commonality of America's coldest spot here in Minnesota. This defines your past and my current. We are often apologetic and assume it is done better elsewhere. Minnesota, represented well by companies like 3M represent some of the very best in energy efficiency. My memories of Lithuanians spreading goose fat on their faces while I was kept well insulated by my 3M engineered clothing tells me that I would not wish to change places nore let my mind meander to a place where I imagine the rules of thermodynamics studied by the scientists at 3M do not apply. We all remain prisoners to the laws of thermodynamics.

As for "the sheer depth of cold", I am confident that modern society has not flourished much brighter at a higher latitude that what we experience here in the Twin Cities and further north. I am sure such things are true in Russia as well as Scandinavia. What I am also confident in is my suburban, modern-home R-52 in the attic is likely more efficient in its build and energy miserlyness than most any home similarly situated in the world.

I am always glad when I get to read your Newsletter.

Expand full comment
founding

Your phrase "the sheer depth of cold" really conjures it up for me - not just your day in Suzdal, but the very few times I've experienced a cold that I genuinely didn't feel I was capable of handling. A kind of vertigo, like that feeling when you're drifting off to sleep of being at the top of the stairs, falling forward into space. A cold you can fall into until it's too far to come out again.

And you've answered a question I've long had: because of how spectacularly cold it gets in Russia, have Russians mastered the art of making houses that truly, properly keep in the warmth? If I ever have the privilege of designing my own home, I'll look at the way Russians do it. And also central Europeans. I visited a friend in Luxembourg during a -10C cold snap, and it was absolutely amazing how warm her house was, and how painfully cold I became within seconds of leaving it. First time I'd been in a house that was properly engineered in that way - the UK certainly hasn't mastered it, and it seems Scotland especially so, weirdly enough, lots of cold, big houses here with the wind whistling in, which seems ludicrous considering the climate. Maybe a hangover from the miserably bone-cold time of castles, as you note! (That's exactly what strikes me every time I wander through the remains of a Scottish castle - "THE TEMPERATURE MUST HAVE BEEN INTOLERABLE.")

I'm fascinated by the cold - love it, when it's manageable and in the "type 2 fun" range, while trying to acknowledge that kind of opt-in low-level cold-for-fun is a very very different thing to, say, what so many folk in Ukraine are dealing with right now. But I'm fascinated about the way some people have grown accustomed to levels of it others of us would find unbearable, where we'd shut down and panic. Hmmm. I wrote a thing a while back on my old blog about the science of human bodies getting too cold - for a while it was the most popular thing on my site (https://feveredmutterings.com/the-human-scale-of-cold-how-we-freeze-and-how-we-thaw) But - hmmm. Hmmmmmm. Hey, I have a newsletter about sciencey things now. Hmm.

On topic: we're having what is, to us, a pretty cold snap - about 5 or 10 degrees C below freezing - and since I'm recovering from a nasty cold and since my cold cabin isn't the place to do it, I've booked myself into a nearby hotel for two days, starting tomorrow.

>>"try and fail to read Kim Stanley Robinson"

😂 Ruh roh. I'm guessing we're not going to have excited conversations about everything in the Mars trilogy anytime soon! (Having felt both ways about his work - both "this is so endless and these people are so annoying and I wish something would HAPPEN" and also the fan-boy I am today, I totally get both responses!)

Expand full comment
deletedDec 12, 2022Liked by Antonia Malchik
Comment deleted
Expand full comment