Marmota mormax — Mass Audubon photo

Punxsutawney Phil has emerged and told us we have six more weeks of winter. That’s no surprise as human weather forecasters have told us to hunker down for a blast of frigid arctic air. New England has had a warm, snow-free winter so far, so this will come as a shock.

On the whole, however, the Northeast has escaped the numerous weather catastrophes affecting other parts of the country. We will bundle up and push on through this. When the cold has ended, our house will still be standing, dry and in one piece. That’s more than many people have right now.

Coming Soon: The Boston Quiz

I have a post coming this month that offers a Boston Quiz. It asks reader to select between two photos: one in Boston and one in Europe. To do this, and to calculate the scores, I bought a new piece of software, Formidable Forms, and I have been struggling to create the quiz and add it to the WordPress blog page.

As with a great deal of software, the developers think it’s intuitive, easy to learn and use. Of course, they do. They designed it. They have been living with the software’s functionality and terminology for months or even years. Navigating it is a snap to them and they lose sight of what it feels like to be a new user trying to make something happen.

To be fair, the company’s customer service people are well versed in the software and extremely helpful. You can actually put in a comment and get an email response from a real live human being. One of them even made a video for me. What a difference from companies that expect you to learn their product on your own just by reading tutorials.

I’m excited about the quiz. If you like it, I can think of many other quizzes to do once I become experienced.

Roundup of January 2023 Posts

If winter’s cold blast is affecting you, just start a fire, curl up under a throw, and catch up on some of the posts you may have missed in January 2023 on The Next Phase Blog.

Boston and History

• 25 Beacon Street: Boston’s Movable Address — Aline

Business and Technology

• The Minimum Wage: Theory vs Reality — Aline

Earth and Space

• From Earth’s Core to the Green Comet — Aline

Life and Culture

• The GOP’s Speaker of the House Debacle — Aline

Food and Cooking

• Kitchen Culture Comes from the French — Aline
• Cooks, Chefs, and Psychopaths — Aline
• The Incredible, Unaffordable Egg — Aline

Movies and Television

• The 2023 Academy Awards: WTF? — Aline

Travel

• 4 of the Most Beautiful Places to See in 2023 — Guest

February Activities

February is a short month but one that’s chock full of things to do. These include a virtual tour of Boston’s Unitarian Trail—places and people important to the development of Unitarianism in the United States.

I know that’s a yawn for a lot of people but stick with me — there really is a lot of interesting information. You can register for the virtual tour on the Boston By Foot website.