One year on Substack.
#053
Three hundred sixty four days ago, I published my first Substack. My goal was to publish weekly for a year and, today I accomplished just that. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed, shared, commented, and followed along from the beginning as well as those who’ve joined along the way.
For nearly a week now, like many of you, we’ve been navigating winter weather. While I’m technically not a prepper, I was solidly prepared for the winter storm that arrived here in southern West Virginia last Saturday.
I brought in about half cord of hickory and white oak for the wood stoves, got 10 extra gallons of fuel for our small generator, and as we’ve grown accustomed to over the years, left a vehicle at the foot of our hill to be able to get in and out of town when needed.
With the arrival of ice early Sunday morning, we expected to lose power. Sure enough, just before lunchtime the power went out. A couple of hours later, I fired up the generator, ran the necessary extension cords, and plugged in our refrigerator. For a short while, we even watched TV using my phone as a hotspot to stream Pluribus on Apple TV (highly recommended). Most importantly, I was able to run the coffee pot the next morning.
Temperatures dropped considerably overnight, but between the wood stoves and the propane wall-mounted heater, we were comfortable. Monday morning, I walked down the hill to meet a five-man crew from Kansas City who’d come east ahead of the storm to help restore power. In just under 24 hours, we had power back. Bless those guys.
The day after, we lost water as our local public service district struggled to unfreeze the pumps at the intake to fill the water tanks. And, as if bad things do in fact come in threes, our water heater stopped working. After a couple of YouTube videos, I got it working again and although we still can’t drive up our hill, we have (as of this writing), power and hot water.
The sun has been out, but temperatures haven’t been above freezing and won’t be until at least Monday. I was so taken aback by seeing the sun on our dining room table this morning, I made a couple of quick pictures of some very useful things from the last several days: my lined work gloves (that I’ve just about worn out), my Leatherman, and of course, coffee.
I hope you’ve been able to stay safe and warm during this weather. As prepared as I like to think I was, I’m always making notes on how to be better prepared for the next storm. What are some things you’ve learned over the years about preparing for inclement weather? Do you ever feel like you’ve prepared enough?
I’ve been printing more lately. Last week, I printed a stack of work prints for my Genealogy of Nights project so I could work on sequencing them on something other than a screen. Earlier today, I made a 16”x20” print on 17”x22” Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique paper of a picture I made in McDowell County last month. Again, our dining room table provided the perfect light.
This Canson paper is my favorite to print with. I’ve made all my exhibition prints with it for the last 10 years. I’m a big fan of 16”x20” prints as well as 8”x10” but the 8.5”x11” paper size has been out of stock for months. I also like Ilford’s Galerie Smooth Pearl papers.
I’ll be sharing more prints here soon.
Again, thanks for a great first year on Substack. What would you like to see more of here in the future? Feel free to comment or message me.
Keep taking care of each other.
- Roger
Every time I print an 11x14, I like it. And every time I think...I should have printed 16x20. // Here in NJ, it hasn't been over freezing since I don't know when. But, it hasn't been windy so it really hasn't been too bad, except there's no clean trails to walk my dogs without just tromping through snowcrete. Not fun, unfortunately. I'm in an apartment and we didn't have any issues with stormy. My prep work consisted of having a crock pot of pulled pork going, and making a couple of quarts of potato/sausage soup. :-)
It"s the day after (1/31) and we have about 8 new inches of snow. So far all the modern conveniences are still up and running. We are now in the age group where friends are checking on us. It's a strange transition.