“Environmentalists have embarked on a secular crusade,” reads the headline for Katherine Kersten’s column in the StarTribune yesterday. The conservative columnist argues that Christians should beware of turning environmentalism into a “secular religion” and quotes a Prof. Robert H. Nelson, who criticizes the “environmental gospel” as “Calvinism minus God.” She goes on to say that this “gospel” appeals to people who are “turning away from traditional religion”: Read the rest of this entry »

…according to this interesting New York Times article, Rural Colleges Seek New Edge and Urbanize. Northfield blogger extraordinaire Griff Wigley has already posted a nice digest of quotes from the article, including those relating to the creation of walkable civic spaces where cars are “de-emphasized.”

Still bitterly cold here. Minus 14 this morning. On Monday the sub-zero run in the Twin Cities ended, with the temperature rising above zero for the first time in 63 hours - less than 3 days. The record run of below-zero weather for the Twin Cities, according to meteorologist Paul Douglas, is 168 hours, or 7 days, back in 1912.

The low-temperature spot in the lower 48 states has been in Embarrass, Minnesota, for at least the last four days. Starting with February 3, these have been the daily lows there: -34, -42, -38, -41. Embarrass is in northeastern Minnesota, near (on?) the Iron Range and not far from the Canadian border.

Sustainable transportation is out the window - out in the cold and freezing - for us at the moment. I’m driving my wife and daughter to work and to school in the car. The bike sits, patiently waiting for the next ride.

Our thermostat read minus 23 around 6 am this morning. A few hours later it read 18 below. I checked out neighboring readings for National Weather Service stations and those indicated lows of 18 below last night, so perhaps we were in a colder pocket.

This is the coldest we’ve been since two years ago. At least it’s not as cold as it was in Winnipeg, Manitoba, yesterday, where the low was minus 38 and the high was in the minus 20’s. As you can see, I try to limit my perspective on issues like this by looking at colder places. Check out the nice WeatherOffice site maintained by the Meteorological Service of Canada if you want to do the same. It currently shows Winnipeg as the coldest place in Canada - even colder than the Arctic. If you find a similar site that has a current map for Siberia or northern Asia, let me know!

We normally keep our house at 68 degrees, but today I’m experimenting with keeping the house at 66 and turning on an electric space heater in the office where I work.

We do, however, have some wonderfully sunny rooms with southern windows. How nice it was to read in the sun yesterday, where I felt quite warm. It brings back good memories of doing the same in my father’s small wood-floored study when I was growing up.

It’s supposed to warm up some this week, but not a lot. Ah, but when it does eventually get to twenty degrees again, how nice it will feel!