On snowy days with gray skies, we don’t get much in the way of picture-perfect sunrises here in southwest New Hampshire. What we do get, though, are dimly gray postcard shots of white church steeples standing behind snow-dusted Christmas trees. (Click here to see this image larger.)
When I went to bed around 11:00 last night, my bedroom window blinds were glowing with the dim reflected light of newly fallen snow, and my bedroom blinds looked pretty much the same when I got up at 7:00 this morning. You don’t wake up at 7:00 on snowy December mornings to admire the sunrise; you wake up at 7:00 on snowy December mornings to walk the dog and dig out your car. In the process, you don’t lament the lack of a picture-perfect sunrise; instead, you content yourself with life’s little blessings, like the plow-guys who worked all night to make sure both streets and sidewalks were clean.
Neither snow nor rain stops the postal service, and neither snow nor rain stops intrepid dog-walkers, either.
Judging from this snow-buried ribbon on a downtown wish-tree, someone in Keene had their wish come true. “I wish for lots of snow,” it reads, and we got it: some 7-8 inches by my untrained estimate. The snow started yesterday around noon; by the time I returned from collecting one more batch of take-home exams on campus at 3pm, the snow was ankle deep.
After letting Reggie out for one last sniff-and-pee before hunkering down for the night, I closed my blinds to the outside snowing world, trusting the weather forecasters who said the storm would end around 10 so we could dig out at sunrise. When your grading is piled higher and deeper, it doesn’t really matter how deep it gets outside. On a Thirsty Thursday night when students were washing those exams right out of their brains with buckets of beer, I contented myself with my paper-pile and several mugs of hot chocolate. You can probably imagine what I was wishing for.
In Newton, they got 10 inches, and that’s exact: J measured after the snowfall had begun to taper off last night. “When you arrive here on Friday afternoon, park on the street” J suggested after I’d decided not to attempt the Keene-to-Newton commute in last night’s intense snowfall. Even with a snow-blower, digging out a long driveway will take the better part of a day, if not more.
One person’s wish is another one’s work…and I know that after returning from this morning’s dog-walk to shovel my own much shorter driveway. Wishes can be weighty if you let them accumulate. Between yesterday and last night, I graded a single class’s worth of essay portfolios, which means I have two more piles (and those take-home exams) to keep me warm this weekend. Whatever your approach to paper piles, you don’t want them to grow cold. Little by little–shovelful by shovelful–you dig yourself out, remembering to lift with your intellectual knees, not your back. Throwing out your back shoveling snow is ugly enough; throwing out your brain reading papers, their contents at times hefted with a different kind of shovel, is something else entirely.
This is my not-entirely-on-topic contribution to today’s Photo Friday theme, Sunrise. Here’s another angle on Keene’s downtown Christmas tree, which has been obstructing the view of Central Square’s bronze sentinel for several weeks. Christmas trees always look better with snow, but I’m not so sure about snow-helmeted sentinels.
Dec 14, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I love these pictures! I’ve only ever seen that much snow here ONCE in my life. None at all for the past 4 years or so.
I doubt I’d enjoy shoveling it though. Saw a guy on the news last night – can’t remember which state, but one of the ones who’d had warning about the snow coming. He was in the store buying a shovel. The interviewer said, “You’re just now buying a shovel?” and the guy said, “Oh I’ve got two at home.” The man asked him why he was buying another and he said, “Well just in case.” I can’t imagine!
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Dec 14, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Well, I have two or three shovels at home, and I really should have an extra one in the car. You never can be too careful. 🙂
I remembered last night, for instance, that both my ice-scraper & snow brush were inside my car. That makes sense if you’re out somewhere & need to clear your car, but it doesn’t help if your car is buried. Luckily, I have a broom, and that works just as well. But every time we get a big storm, you hear horror stories of people trying to find/dig out their buried car in a parking lot full of buried cars.
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Dec 15, 2007 at 3:54 pm
I miss snow, down here in TX. Thanks.
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Dec 16, 2007 at 10:53 pm
If a game ain’t on the teevee, I don’t see it. A bit of crowd claustrophobia or something like that.
I don’t know if you read my blog, but when I did today’s post I had a number of blogging women in mind, and you were one of them.
Hope you watch the videos, and like them.
Nice snow pic.
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Dec 17, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Goodness. That was some game. I hope you weathered it well.
And thank the Holy Buckeye you weren’t at the Browns’ game 🙂
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Dec 20, 2007 at 12:59 pm
P.S. Love the color combo.
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