Grandma Says: Weather Lore from Meteorologist Cindy Day

Published by Nimbus Publishing
Reviewed for Edwards Book Club

I was so excited to have the opportunity to read and review this little book. Besides the wonderful old sayings our grandparents and great-grandparents had about the weather, Cindy Day is a 25-year veteran of meteorology most recently seen on CTV.

Many of us have heard the saying "Red sky at night, Sailors delight; Red sky at morning, Sailors take warning" but the one my Grandma used to say, especially if we were on a car trip, was "If there's enough blue sky to mend a pair of Dutchman's breeches, the weather will be fine." Now, please take no offence to this, in Grandma's day the men and boys in Holland wore very wide-legged pants that came in at the ankle, hence if there were clouds in the sky but a big blue patch among them, the day would turn out fine. I was happy about seeing this one because I'd never heard anyone other than Grandma (and myself) say it!

This little treasure, divided by seasonal weather sayings, gives us the sayings of the past, but the added bonus is the meteorological science connecting the dots. We are given the how and why these sayings would come about and how true or not they were. I enjoyed this book tremendously, and now I know how so many of these weather 'wisdoms' came about, Groundhog's spring predictions aside, many are much more realistic. This is a remarkable opportunity to learn why these sayings were so often on the mark and what science tells us how they worked. For me, this was a happy trip down memory lane, but put it all together and it's a cohesive book of lore and science, which don't clash at all. A Globe and Mail year-end top 20 Bestseller. Recommended for any age.

The Palomar Paradox: a SETI Mystery by Richard Rydon

Published by Lulu.com

This third book in the Luper series makes for interesting reading in two ways. Richard Rydon has written a mystery, but he has also written an educational book. Peopled with an eccentric array of characters, the excitement of discovery or possible discovery is palpable and makes for a good mystery. On the other hand, for each portion of fiction, there is supplementary non-fiction details about specific items mentioned in the conversations between the fictional scientists. Personally, I found this interesting, but it is laid out in such a manner that these educational bits or clarifications can be skipped over without losing the thread of the story.

Of course SETI is looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence through signals parlayed through space. The Palomar telescopes, situated on Mount Palomar, are well-known to the general public in North America. Some sudden activity at the station has everyone reacting differently. Excited scientists work on either eliminating the signals as "noise" or discovering intelligence in the signals they are receiving. In the meantime, the government is doing its best to squelch the possibility with a wall of silence.

Strangely, at the same time as these spikes are found, there are reported sightings of UFOs. Are they real? Are they hoaxes? Are they simply misidentified? What would be the purpose of a supposed crash of a UFO in the Salter Sea? A strange location at the best of times. And what was the man doing who was found on the catwalk of the large radio telescope?

The book goes through a range of emotions: concern, excitement, disappointment, disgust, and diligence. The mystery circles around whether the signals are intelligent or not. With three random scientific astronomers working from different perspectives, the mystery deepens. Why is the government so intent on keeping everything quiet? Maybe that is the biggest mystery, but maybe it is about to be opened up. An interesting read, I felt it could have been expanded on, but perhaps that's another story.