The sudden onset of Spring has caught me with my window screens still stashed away in the basement. It’s surprising how quickly the house heats up when everything stays enclosed. I keep meaning to get to the task of scrubbing all the screens and washing all the windows (on both sides) and putting everything up, repairing the occasional tear and replacing a few of the broken spring-posts that hold the things in place.

I’m really going to get around to it.

If nothing else, that suffocating feeling will move me to action. Though you know what they always say about the frog that will happily wait in a pot of water that’s slowly increasing to a boil. Yes, they say it’s not true at all. Frogs don’t sit still for very long, and neither do I. When I move I’m always moving away from washing the windows and fixing the screens.

Meanwhile, I learned that the Earth’s core is hotter than we thought.

Lots.

In fact, the center of the Earth is nearly as hot as the surface of the sun, and it’s the flowing currents of liquified metals that gives our planet its magnetic field. This is a bit of information that has made me somewhat less enthusiastic about digging a hole to China, or even halfway. What Henry Ford said about chopping your own wood is also true of shoveling your way to Shanghai – it warms you twice and the second blast is a doozy. The notion of a Blazing Sun in the Center of the Earth does shift my image of the rock we inhabit. The good old Earth is a more unruly place than I thought and more a piece of the Universe than I had imagined.

Aren’t we fortunate the ember has cooled just enough for us to survive on its surface? The outer core, where all the heat is, lies about 1,800 miles straight down. That’s the same as the distance as the drive from St. Paul to Miami, which is a more traditional way to get a little warmer. Here’s another way to think of it: Minneapolis has 1,800 miles of sidewalks. If you laid them all end to end and dug a hole to bury them upright, you’d be insane AND remarkably strong. And you’d deserve what you’d get – a high-pressure molten geyser right up the snoot.

When have you used a shovel to do something worthwhile?