In the seventeenth century extreme weather, like eclipses, was still an expression of “wonder” or God’s will. The winter of 1683-84 was an especially wonderful one, with the occurence of the “Frost Fair” enabled by the rarely frozen Thames River. Nearly 20 years earlier, the amazing Robert Hooke, natural philosopher, mathmetician, architect, and the Surveyor of the City of London after the Great Fire, published amazing images of wonderful snowflakes in his Micrographia.
And finally today. The view from my bedroom window: looking westward on Chestnut Street, Salem, Massachusetts on the shortest day of 2010.
