Snow and Other Four Letter Words

Out for a brief walk yesterday in as close to a winter wonderland as I would like to get for some time to come, I started to wonder how words for Eskimo a snowflake might have. I know all about the converse even though I haven't had a pair of Chuck Taylors in years.

I'm grateful to not live in the Washington DC area every day but most especially this past weekend as they looked far colder and more snowed in than anything I saw going on in and around my part of the Original New England colonies. I don't recall seeing a lot of snow-clearing either.

But perhaps our friends to the South and in the Deep South have a different appreciation for snow and ice and cold. I've lived where there have been four seasons my whole life except for the year in Greenland where they had two, dark and incredibly cold and daylight all the time and not too bad.

Wish I could say I learned a life lesson north of the arctic but I didn't. I was shivering too much.

I realize that when you live where I do, snow comes as part of the deal. Sometimes it's early, we've had some before Thanksgiving and sometimes late, sort of like this year, technically, but we're always going to have it.

I try to remember, "snow itself is lonely, or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and on thing only."

I'll spend a lot of time today cursing the white stuff, as I'm not allowed to shovel it, growing angrier and angrier until it hits me: let it go.
-bill kenny