The Old Cape Blood Ruby - Barbara Eppich Struna
Truly a story that travels from sea to shining sea and spans the years from earliest beginnings of the United States to today. It is part memoir, part mystery, and part historical fiction. Parts of the story are written from the first person and parts from the third person points of view. There are a lot of threads to weave together into a coherent and entertaining tale.
The “pigeon’s blood” ruby is a set in a mysterious ring that appears on the finger in the portrait of a historic lady that hangs over the fireplace of Neil Hallett. The ring is allegedly from the treasure of the pirate, Sam Bellamy, captain of the notorious Wydah—another neat loop in Struna’s tale. Hallett, the thief, is descended from a thief. New England, and Cape Cod in particular, is filled with family history. The graveyards are filled with Bangs, Swetts, Allens, and Brewsters. They were settlers, fishermen, and ministers. The fictional Walter Ellis of this story was a fisherman, whose livelihood was cut short by the destruction of his ship in the Portland Gale of 1898. Leaving his family, he sets off to find gold in Alaska.
By a twist of fate, he is set upon by thugs on the streets of Seattle, and misses his passage to Alaska and separated from his friends. When he recovers, he signs on to another ship owned by a millionaire named E.H. Harriman, a railroad tycoon. In 1899, Harriman really did sponsor and accompany a scientific expedition to catalog the flora and fauna of the Alaska coastline. Many prominent scientists and naturalists went on the expedition, aboard the luxuriously refitted 250-foot steamer, SS George W. Elder. Struna’s fictional Walter Ellis signed aboard to complete his journey to Juneau. Another twist of fate, burns and disfigures Ellis, and causes him to lose the sight of one eye and put him into the hospital in Juneau where he is cared for by an attractive Indigenous nurse.
These aspects of history are interwoven with present day Nancy Caldwell, history detective. She is the link that connects Provincetown to Juneau and the past to the present. Nancy has a son who happens to be living in Alaska near where Walter Ellis ended up. During a familial visit, she acquires the remnants of a letter and a wallet discovered by a young girl in a cleft in a rock near Nancy's son's house.
Nancy is an antiques sleuth, and when she returns to Cape Cod she is invited to survey the contents of an old house in Provincetown. Neil Hallett is also interested in the contents of the house, and Struna begins to weave the stories into an interesting tapestry. Will Walter abandon hopes of returning to his family and marry the beautiful nurse? Will the Tlingit tribe accept him? Will his wife remarry, declaring Walter dead? Will Neil Hallett find the ruby before Nancy Caldwell does?
The Old Cape Blood Ruby is a complicated story with Struna juggling all the different elements. As a reader, I could feel her joy at bringing the past to life. An old house is full of memories from all the lives that have passed through it. This is a well researched, well founded, and interesting tale that satisfies an interest in history, twisted into a gentle and loving mystery. It is respectful of Indigenous Alaskan people as well as the present day residents of Cape Cod while honoring the use of the reader’s time.
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Heating Degree Days
Is it getting warmer in your neighborhood? The temperature changes hour to hour, season to season, year to year. How do you know if it's getting warmer? You could just write down the temperature every day. But there is another way. There is a system called "Heating Degree Days". Which is based on when you need to turn the heat on.
 The standard heating degree day scale is based on 65 ºF. Since the common design temperature for comfort conditions in the house is 68ºF, when the temperature falls to 65 ºF, you might need to turn the heat on. If the average temperature for the day is 64 ºF, that would be 1 heating degree day. If the average temperature for the day is 55 ºF, that would be 10 heating degree days. Simple enough. Right?
If you know the heating degree days for a location, you can design the heating system to satisfy the load. You just need to know how well the house retains heat and the heating degree days, and bang! You can size the heating system to meet that load. But what if the heating degree days are changing because the climate is warming?
When I started working on heating loads here in Massachusetts, the closest heating degree day records were for Boston at 5630. At that point Juneau, Alaska was 9075 and Honolulu had 0 heating degree days. Those are 20 year averages. It is amazing to me how the numbers are very site specific. (I had a contractor tell me just the other day that he didn't bother with heat load calculations because they were too hard and they were always wrong!) The variation in degree days between the south side and the north side of Long Island is dramatic, for example.
I have been keeping records with my weather station here on my house since 2008 when the HDD right here on my house was 5532. Pretty close to the Boston number. Last year it was 4590! Almost 1000 heating degree days warmer! I won't say that it's a straight line linear progression, but it's definitely a progression.
At the same time I heat my house with oil. Oil is not like gas for tracking heating loads, because you buy a tank of oil and then use it over the coming days and weeks. But I can compare my heating degree days per gallon of oil—like miles per gallon of gas for your car. As I make my house more energy efficient, I can watch my degree days per gallon change. In 2008 I was getting 4.847 HDD/Gal. Last year I was up to 5.508 HDD/Gal.
So I am doing reasonably well to maintain the cost of heating the house as the price of oil goes up, the HDDs go down, and my HDD/Gal goes up. Geeky?
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