Thanksgiving weekend might have been fall’s last hurrah. Sunday was a gift, a 48 degree day near the end of November. A time to, say, clean one’s gutters before the deep freeze set in. I awoke the next day to the weatherman saying something about arctic air settling in for the rest of the week. So it has, with winds that not only rattled the windows of my 90 year house, but made them hum. The day-time temperatures should be in the teens and twenties this week.

So it seems time to announce the Best Winter Ever is here. Again. I’ve gotten a few questions about how the Best Winter Ever could happen again. Does that invalidate last winter’s BWE status? Should I change the website to Best Winter Yet? To these questions I say “No” and “No” and in general, “don’t hold my linear experience of time against me.”

Not that I am prepared exactly. My beard is still coming in and I won’t be doing too many wintery things this week. Instead I’ll be back in upstate New York where fall is still holding on and my step brother is getting married. But winter is winter and I can’t pretend it’s not here just because it doesn’t quite fit my schedule. That’s part of the fun of this whole thing anyway, finding ways to work with what you can’t control. To paraphrase Tom Waits, “You Can Never Hold Back Winter.” (You can hear the original at the Anti records website)

The Soliquinox will be observed February 8th.