Solitaire · February 15, 2025 

I enjoy a game of solitaire as part of my evening ritual, just as at other times I enjoy a crossword puzzle (of the British cryptic variety, rewarding cleverness, not the American style, measuring knowledge of trivia from the mass entertainment media). It is a fifteen-minute interlude in a life filled with tasks whose duration is measured in months.

I play a game called Freecell, as did my mother. Heaven knows where she learned it. It was popularized by Microsoft, but I'm sure she didn't get it there. She used a deck of traditional playing cards, as do I. I find it's as useful to keep my hands busy as my mind! – The one in the picture is six years old, two or three times the expected lifetime of an electronic device.

Freecell, unlike the much more popular solitaire games of Klondike and Pyramid, is almost always winnable, and calls for some skill and attention. In fact, it calls for enough of one's attention that other thoughts must be set aside. That is not a bad pre-bedtime condition.

There is no linear algorithm for winning Freecell, but some practices are very useful. – Think about your goals, not just the moves you immediately can make.– Get the aces and twos in place, and the rest of the cards will inevitably follow, just the freight cars and caboose of an old train will come along after the engine and coal car. – Don't paint yourself into corners, such leaving all the middle-valued cards out of reach and so not available for connections between high- and low-valued cards. – If you can avoid it, don't put all your eggs in one kind of basket, but start early foundations with at least one red and one black suit. – These are not bad principles for life outside of the game.

Recently, I looked around to see if there were other solitaire games winnable with skill. I came across Accordion, which comes in different varieties. For a long time, it was considered nearly unwinnable, until somebody figured out an approach that almost always works. It does call for much concentration, so is still widely considered very difficult.

Accordion, unlike most other solitaire games, is not an exercise in sorting, but of matching and collapsing – hence the name. As such, it calls for different skills.

I've been trying it for a few days. Yesterday, I managed to win a game, I must admit much facilitated by a favorable initial lay of the cards, but still encouraging.

It's early days yet, but I am tentatively laying out some guidelines for approaches. – Prioritize carefully picking out a set of cards (four with the same value) that can be brought together in a favorable initial position. – Figure out what kinds of moves can be done with little risk or thought, and those that can't. – For the latter, concentrate relentlessly on unintended side effects as well as wished-for benefits. – Develop subroutines for common problems, such as blockages by unfavorable sequences, and one card or two straggling behind the chosen leaders. – Again, there is nothing here that would not be a good guideline in everyday life outside the game.

Accordion does take some space, which is a challenge for someone who tends to build up clutter on the kitchen table. But adjusting that habit would not be a bad thing, either.

Midwinter · January 30, 2025

Last winter was very mild. The ground barely froze. I was able to get a jump, months early, on a pile of spring chores that is usually overwhelming.

This winter has offered unrelenting cold. The amount of snow has not been great, nor have there been extremely low temperatures. But the days when the thermometer cracks freezing have been few, and when they've come, often with gusty winds. My last monthly gas bill was over $500, far above the norm.

It's January. One should expect such things. I do have more than enough indoor activities, and have been getting better at having a balance of things that require thinking and things that don't. (A warm day, or even a warm afternoon, would be nice for a couple of pending tasks… one will come.)

The snows have been pretty ones.

Lichens: January field observation · January 8, 2025

Though early January morning weather has been offering a wind chill factor of 0° F, it turns out that there have been good opportunities for field observation, prompted by my new lichen book.

The growth here is a hammered shield lichen, one of the most prevalent varieties globally and locally. It is a symbiotic combination of a fungus (Parmelia sulcata) and a green microalga (Trebouxia).

The microalga component has the capability of photosynthesis, deriving nutrient energy from the air and sunlight. It is notable here that the lichen displays a greenish tint even in mid-winter, in contrast to most of the deciduous plant life around it, now dead, brown and yellow.

The cells of the fungus are filamentary. As my reference notes, these threadlike structures weave into and around the alga, providing a firm base and skin. The durability of the composite is evident in the photograph. The lichen is still present and evidently alive, hanging loosely around the branch, long after the tree itself has died, the bark has dropped, and the wood itself is in marked decay.