The weather channel has named this storm “Naya” for reasons I can’t quite even imagine. I wonder if they pay somebody to do this.

I think I’ll stick to my name, which is “winter.” It’s winter and a snowstorm has just arrived anywhere from five to 18 inches, depending on where you live and how much the Weather Channel wants to charge advertisers for this one.

Winter storms are a profit center now, big-time. Lots of Weather Channel supporters message me to disagree with my jeering. “They predict the weather accurately,” one wrote me, “don’t we need to be warned about storms.”

It’s fascinating to me at how slick corporations are now at making us thing we need the dumb things they sell, and that they are not really in it for the money, but to provide us with services that we really need. You can lead a horse to water, and yes, you can make them drink.

We sure do need warnings about the weathe, but as I recall in my lengthening life, that’s exactly what the non-profit and free National Weather Service was doing for decades, and it is their forecasts that the Weather and other profit-making websites use all the time.

How did we live without Yuppie sounding names? The politicians who say it’s all about fear are telling us the truth. We pay attention to what frightens us the most, and there is big money in that.

Whatever you want to call it, this new storm is here. It began around 1 p.m. (cancelling out my weekly reading at the Mansion) and came out hard and strong, a driving snow mixed with ice. A long cold night and day.

The forecast her says anywhere between five and 15 inches, depending on what forecast one subscribes to. My guess is six or seven, although the first few hours are impressive. Storms are beautiful to me, I see them in my mind as Mother Earth singing symphonies for me.

The animals are stoics, they march to their own drummer. I love taking storm photos and tonight, I’m cooking one of my health Storm Pizzas: tonight, wheat flour, sliced sweet potatoes, Chorizo, and sliced tomato on sauce and a thin base of garlic paste,  Ricotta cheese, and some bits of yellow paper and strips of Kale and sprouts mixed in.

I’ll put up a photo. The artist went walking out in the woods, of course, with her loyal Centurion Fate and is now holed up creating things in her studio.