Approximately Infinite Universe

Today is a retail day whose intensity, I've read, rivals that of Black Friday. I'm not heading anywhere near a mall today, but I wish you well if you are (and wear body armor).

For many years, living in my wife's country, Germany, I, too, observed today as Zweite Weinachten (ours didn't have podnars or ten gallon hats), with Christmas Day primarily for immediate family with today being more for visits to and from friends and neighbors. Quite frankly for anyone who wishes 'it could be Christmas all year round' (which includes, I imagine, the folks who own credit card franchises), this is about as good as it gets.

We don't seem to have Second Christmas here in the Land of the Round Door Knobs. For years, after my family and I relocated from Germany, all of us would travel to my mother's house in Central New Jersey where we celebrated Christmas with various members of my large family (Sigrid has two younger sisters and one younger brother; I have three of the former and two of the latter) and their children. When Mom traded up from cross country skis to year-round sandals in Florida, we started holding our own Christmas in our own house and skipped the interstate travel. We no longer get a card from the EZ-Pass people.

I went for a walk around my my block yesterday morning--we live in a section of Norwich across from the Chelsea Parade which is, in turn, across from Norwich Free Academy. It's a quiet residential area with houses of all sizes, neatly-trimmed lawns in the summer and mostly shovelled sidewalks in the winter. Last Saturday into Sunday, as happened across most of the Eastern Seaboard, we got pounded with snow. I've heard for years that size doesn't matter so I'm not sure how much snow we had, but 'whoa! lots' comes to mind.

Our Public Works Department logged many hours plowing and sanding major and minor roadways to eventually subdue the white stuff, though not without (in some instances) unhappy complaints in the local newspapers from residents on the manner and method. Happens every year--the foot of my driveway, which I've just cleared by pushing the snow into the street is reburied by the city's driver as he plows my street and returns the favor.

It's nice when everything can be reduced to 'us vs. them' and become a part of that 'You Can't Fight City Hall' mantra. Imagine my unhappy chagrin when I hiked around the block to buy a newspaper I don't get delivered to the house, from a vending box. I wasn't dismayed because of the walk--it's not much of a walk. Did I mention we have an ordinance, as do many towns, which mandates clearing sidewalks of snowfall X number of hours, NOT days, after the snow has stopped falling? Bet you know where this is going, right?

Do I believe that some portion of those complaining about the city's snow removal efforts last week are part of the FIVE houses within one block of my house whose sidewalks haven't been cleared at all? You betcha. Many of us are the same people who don't even bother to vote anymore, because 'it doesn't make a difference'--the same people whose World of Them is vast and dark, and against which we are nearly powerless because we believe ourselves to be so.

But given an opportunity to do something for ourselves and our neighbors we see every day, clear their walks and paths, we choose inaction over action. I'm not talking about feeding the hungry or housing the homeless--this is the baby stuff that no one ever talks about in a civics class, because it's a given. Except when it's not, or just not convenient. But if this were somehow to become the responsibility of the city or state, we'd be howling to, instead of barking at, the moon when it was done as poorly as we do it for, and to, ourselves.
-bill kenny