SNOWBOUND

         "Unwarmed by any sunset light
                  The gray day darkened into night."
                      John Greenleaf Whittier,  Snowbound



           Snow began falling today in mid-afternoon.  By evening, the ground was covered and more is coming.  Atypically, more accumulation is forecast for the coastal  areas of the state than for the more inland and mountain regions.  What makes for a 'lot' of snow is dependent upon where one lives.  Here in North Carolina, we experience frequency and depths of snowfalls quite differently than in New Hampshire where my brother lives or in Illinois where his daughter lives.  Consequently, what they might consider a  'dusting' can have a huge impact here.  Last night, several school districts across the state cancelled today's classes.  Other counties had 'early dismissal'.  Even in the Deep South in Alabama where my daughter and family live, today's  snow has caused major disruptions.

       I had appointments scheduled into early evening . . . but soon after the snow began, clients began calling to cancel and to reschedule for next week.  Our office support staff were encouraged to leave early as roads were already becoming slippery.
Whether we are open tomorrow morning is iffy as of now.

    Living some sixty + miles from my office, I do not commute every day but occasionally stay overnight in our office building.
By the time my last client session was complete, I knew that the drive home would be unsafe. I would prefer being home with my wife.  But, here I am 'snowbound' at the office, planning no driving until the roads are clear.

    Back when 'dinosaurs roamed the earth' (to steal a brother's line) and I was in high school,  our English literature classes read more than a smattering of poetry... many of these we had to memorize (or as it was then called, "learn by heart").  Some of them I can yet recite.  Though not for memorization, we read Whittier's Snowbound,  a somewhat idyllic story of a family and acquaintances who were snowbound for a week.  Set in the mid 19th century, there were few 'modern conveniences' or distractions. Nor (unlike my office) was there an abundance of reading materials.  Consequently, as the poem has it, the people had lots of conversation and tale-telling. (It is a somewhat lengthy poem; if you are interested, do an internet search by title.)

     Recently, one of my college students from the 1970's responded to a post about 'January-itis' and told a delightful 20th century variation on the poem.  Doug has given me permission to retell it here (although I have removed specific town names as respect to his privacy);

   "Reading [the post] reminds me that I have never really grown up. I still love and wish for snow -at least enough for snow cream.  I rarely get it here [in the Coastal Plain region of our state].              
  My family and I were stranded in the 20 inch snow we had in 1980.  We were in my old house that once was my grandmother's.  We had no bathroom or running water, but we had beds, wood heaters and plenty of wood.  My grandmother was next door in a mobile home.  She cooked for us. We had no telephone service.  Being on the edge of the county on a narrow county road, there was no one coming by.  We were about as isolated as I have ever  been.  But I loved it.  We were there two nights.  On Tuesday, Mother said, 'Your daddy will get us out of here today.'  I said, 'How do you know?'. She said, 'He's out of cigarettes.'  Sure enough, he and I made our way down the road to the nearest neighbor's  home.  They had a phone, so Daddy called his parents, and had a tractor sent the five miles to get us.  The fellow who brought it also brought two other men with him.  With them, and the five of us waiting to leave, there were eight of us hanging on to that tractor back to [town].  From [there] the road was cleared to [larger town].  We borrowed my grandfather's car and got home.  My roommate at Duke [where he had gone to seminary after college] was calling  when we got to [larger town] to see why I hadn't shown up for class.
   With all that snow, that was perhaps the only time we ever had significant snow that I didn't get snow cream !"

       Well, Doug, the forecast indicates you will likely get enough for a couple of servings of snow cream.  Enjoy some for me !

     Satchel

3 cent stamps . . . and other relics

     In our high school years, Belton lived fifteen miles away.  By today's measures, it may as well have been fifteen-hundred.  Remember . . .  no iPhones, no FaceTime or texting,  nor any other gizmo's.  Well, perhaps Dick Tracy's wrist radio.  (Who was Dick Tracy?  Go ask 'an old  person' about that comic strip  detective.).  A three minute telephone call between our towns cost 25 cents.  Although gasoline cost but 25 cents per gallon, few high school students had ready access to an automobile (at least in our socio-economic cohort). So, if we wanted to 'communicate' more often than the occasional face-to-face visit, we resorted to writing letters.
  
    A few years ago, I came across some of Belton's letters in my 'archives' a few days before he was to come to lead worship service in a near-by church.  Doubting that he would recognize me across fifty or so years, I identified myself and gave him the bundle of letters.  In his opening comments to the congregation, he mentioned our brief conversation and the letters.  The shocker, he indicated, was that they all bore THREE CENT STAMPS.

    I remember the  arrival of mail addressed to oneself as a 'big deal'.  As a high school freshman, I pestered the clerks at our small-town post office to know when the next delivery was arriving because I  expected a letter from my new 'girl friend'.  One day, Mrs. Lane, a somewhat mischievous sort, wrote on the outside of a newly arrived letter: "Censored by Clerk Lane".  The small post office at my undergrad college was swarmed when the mail was boxed.  Although my brief military service was all within the U.S., it is difficult to describe the scene at 'Mailcall' when the First Sergeant called the names . . . slowly, one by one . . . of the day's recipients.

    As an academic historian 'in an earlier life', I relied heavily on preserved letters for much of my research such as my MA thesis on the first President of Wake Forest College.  And there is great poignancy in the letters  home by Civil War soldiers, many of them barely literate.  Such linkage to one's personal past likely will be increasingly transient with our new modes of 'reaching out' to 'touch'.  Just today, I deleted dozens of old, now inconsequential emails. (I can't imagine an historian of the future finding anything significant therein.) 

   For reasons of economic necessity (it was the time of the Great Depression of the  1930's), my parents lived briefly in different locales just prior to my birth.  In going through some family 'treasures' with them in the 1980's, I was surprised when dad literally grabbed a packet of letters, blushed and quickly put them under lock in his office.  I later learned that they were 'love letters' he had written to his wife back in North Carolina.  Reading them after his death provided a greater appreciation for that period of their lives.

     A largely vanishing art form, such communication is now  derisively labeled 'Snail Mail' and the USPS  seems to attempt offsetting revenue losses with increased rates (soon to be 49 cents) and diversified services.

   What, then, is this vestige of other times . . . the personal letter, handwritten or typed ? (My paternal grand-father used an electric typewriter that always seemed to race ahead of his fingers.)  
In part, it is akin to some of the rationale (in the last post) of viewing old photographs, thereby deepening one's perspectives on life, relationships, meaning, history . . .BIG MATTERS . . .  that transcend an amnesia-prone 'right now'.  

      Create a little 'future history' . . . send someone a hand-written
(unless your script, like mine, resembles hieroglyphics; in that case, type it.  Whoops, not many typewriters around now either, are there?) letter.
    Satchel

   
   

Picture THAT

   Recently I sent my brothers a photograph taken of me in one of my Christmas naps.  Given my fondness for naps and the presence of mischievous folks with cameras, a few such photos exist.  This one startled me . . . not because it was I but because it looks so very much like our dad.  One brother said that it was chilling when he saw it.  Dad's two brothers also noted the very strong resemblance.  Well, that very good man has been deceased for 21+ years and he is still missed, not morbidly, but missed.

         Perhaps because of that photo, or perhaps because we took so many pictures during vacation, or perhaps it was a picture of my now 40-something daughter's fifth birthday that was posted recently ; at any rate, in the past few days, I have been reviewing the many snapshots in the albums that our parents assembled over their years.  Some of them date to the 1920's, perhaps a few to earlier times.  

     As I have noted several times in this blog, living in the past is not healthy; visiting there and, perhaps, learning and attaining perspectives can be enriching.  Mom and dad had pictures of many of our relatives and friends.  Of some of those snapshots, I took pic's with my iPhone and emailed them to my cousins.  Seeing how we used to look can be instructive on several levels, one being to cherish the 'right now'.  As the old proverb has it, "We get too soon old and too late smart."   

     In the gallery that follows, the faces will be familiar to only a few readers.  My hope is that you will consider this an invitation to 'dust off' your family albums and take a retrospective walk.  It might even prompt you to a sentiment like that the Statler Brothers sang: "And can you believe the dresses that they wore !"   

      

l

Left: Mom and Dad ca. early 1980's;   Right: Mom and Dad in Chapel Hill, NC ca mid 1930's

                                               Dad, his Dad and an unknown (to me ) child
                                                                 Around 1954

Above with my brother Den around 1943;

Right, our "Baby Brother", Bob  1948

Below: As Bill Cosby said, "I started out as a child."

 

                Satchel

January-itis

      Looking out our kitchen window early this morning,
I fondly remembered 'Sunny California' of a couple of weeks ago.  As I have 'muttered' a few times on this blog, Winter is hardly my favorite season.

    I have some understanding of the importance of Winter in the rhythm of life.  News articles this week reminded us that the populations of insects, pests, and other annoying 'critters' likely have been reduced by the recent 'Arctic Vortex'. Great! I am pleased for whatever benefits might occur.

     Recently, I re-read Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak and noted that he extolled the many benefits of Winter . . . both on the calendar and within one's Inner Life.  And, I remember the basic point of the song, The Rose…"far beneath the bitter snow lies the seed that with the sun's love in the Spring becomes the Rose."  Still, I feel more drawn to a line from a Shel Silverstein poem: "Must we always have Winter; Can't Springtime just stay?"

      My aversion to cold is directly related to the scene in the above photograph . . . the Marsh Chapel Plaza at Boston University. In the background is the Charles River that seemed to provide a wind tunnel right off the Atlantic Ocean. Though this particular snapshot was made some years after the academic year of 1960-61, it is a sight that I came to know well that year. My dorm room was on the top floor of the building on the left (just out of the picture). I remember snows from early December through until March . . .at least that's 'my version'. At any rate, my Southern thermostat never adapted to the rigors of New England. My brother in New Hampshire has braved 40+ Winters there.  Now that he has retired, he is heading for warmer climes in the Far East for a few weeks's respite.

     Where I live, temperatures earlier this week were single digit with wind chill factors below zero. Gratefully, there was no accompanying precipitation.
Recently I read the quip that 'if you wear flip-flops and mud boots in the same week, you must be from
North Carolina'.  Today, the projected temperature is mid-60's with possible thunderstorms. Just a few minutes ago, the tornado warning elapsed.  But then, I remember, this month was named for Janus, Rome's 'two-faced' god.

    A hopeful aphorism: "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"  Well, it will be good to see the lilies in bloom.

In the background, however, I hear my dad's gentle reminder: 
           "Don't wish your time away, son".

      Satchel