OK, hate to be acting like I own Slog or something, or like I know how to deal with snow or something, but being from Chicago, I can only say:

HAVE FUN. And. . .

Accept that Mother Nature is in charge, and as the contemporary avatar of the Goddess, Neko Case, has put it, “Never turn your back on Mother Earth. . . “

Go for a walk and listen to how different a city blanketed in snow sounds. See how different the familiar streets and houses and trees and parks look. Feel how different it is to walk on snow and ice. Look for a cardinal or a bluejay vivid against the white.

Put out food for birds and rabbits and squirrels. Stay home from work if you can. Keep warm. Ignore politics. Hunker down. Read some poetry, drink something hot, make a pot of soup. Eat the soup with good bread and olive oil or butter. Have a drink with people you love.

After the jump, some poems . . . some of which have lines applicable to tonight’s politics.

Snow
By Louis MacNeice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes?
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands?
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
1935

An anonymous Irish poem that explains why I’m posting to Slog instead of asleep: I don’t have to get up in the morning:

“Sweet is the scholar’s life,
busy about his studies,
the sweetest lot in Ireland
as all of you know well.

No king or prince to rule him
nor lord however mighty,
no rent to the chapterhouse,
no drudging, no dawn-rising.

Dawn-rising or shepherding
never required of him,
no need to take his turn
as watchman in the night.

He spends a while at chess,
and a while with the pleasant harp
and a further while wooing
and winning fine women.

His horse-team hale and hearty
at the first coming of Spring;
the harrow for his team
is a fistful of pens.”

-Anonymous (17th century Ireland)

And of course, Robert Frost:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.

Anyone other than me really pissed to hear this great poem in a car commercial lately?

51 replies on “Snowmaggeddon 2012”

  2. I read poetry, and am camped out at a house with cable, during this weather onslaught, so yes I have seen the jeep ad of which you speak, and yes it pisses me off.

  4. I just got an email from the mayor. The end times are indeed upon us, and we can’t use sick leave.

    If your power goes out, just remember: it’s your fault.

  10. I am disoriented by the fact of a nice person posting beautiful words here, free of cant, bitterness or soppy sentiment. Where the fuck am I, ‘cos this can’t be my Slog.

  13. @5 exciting colour is forbidden in the Northwest. Replace the birds with crows, autumn leaves with evergreen trees, sunny skies with gray rainclouds.

    Three of many reasons a born-and-raised Midwesterner fled Seattle to go back home. (That, and we know what snow is good for: sledding down the hill on, not trying to drive in.)

  14. Aw, I love that Frost poem. The little horse, and the frosty night, and the miles to go before I sleep.

    I had to recite that in school. Do kids still have to recite things in school?

  17. @8 and 9: Don’t care if it’s a Sparks song. I only know the Neko version, and she is not the sparks, she is the fire itself.

    @15 You mean canonical, not canon. But that’d be me being professorial again.

    @Doug, jeez, see something positive in something.

    @Gloomy Gus, sorry for the negative coda, but I hope the rest of the post is positive enough, even with my ornithological ignorance. It genuinely pissed me off to hear a fucking car ad (with what I think, but am not sure, was Frost’s own reading of the poem) debase a poem I love. I consider righteous anger a form of positive vibe.

  19. We have jays, but not the startlingly blue variety of the midwest. But in the winter, hiding in the cedars and firs, one can sometimes hear the whir of the Anna’s hummingbird.

  22. Thank you, Chicago Fan.

    I have some jays that come and tap on my window for nuts and seeds. The squirrels are known to waltz in to help themselves, though.

    Take care.

  25. @13

    Well, each to their own.

    I was sold on the northwest while sipping coffee on a sunny morning while sitting on a boulder in the wreckage-bed of the Carbon river, surrounded by a forest largely unchanged for 150 centuries. But the midwest can be nice too.

  26. Ten miles from Arkham I had struck the trail
    That rides the cliff-edge over Boynton Beach,
    And hoped that just at sunset I could reach
    The crest that looks on Innsmouth in the vale.
    Far out at sea was a retreating sail,
    White as hard years of ancient winds could bleach,
    But evil with some portent beyond speech,
    So that I did not wave my hand or hail.

    Sails out of lnnsmouth! echoing old renown
    Of long-dead times. But now a too-swift night
    Is closing in, and I have reached the height
    Whence I so often scan the distant town.
    The spires and roofs are there—but look! The gloom
    Sinks on dark lanes, as lightless as the tomb!

    Brings a little tear to yr eye, don’t it?

  27. So funny about the birds – there are no cardinals here, or real bluejays for that matter (stellar jays just don’t count), but there are juncos, chickadees, and finches. I miss the spots of color I grew up with Minnesota, but birds here are just as delightful if you give them a chance. A flock of robins stopped by my yard last week, and nothing beats a robin. Nothing. Maybe a screech owl, when you’re walking the dog at night. That’s awesome.

  28. @26, that’s just lovely. Cliff Mass has posted his promised update after examining the models again:

    I just looked at the latest model runs and it seems clear that we are going to have a major snowstorm, one that is NOT followed by major warming and heavy rain.  No Slushmageddon, just Snowmageddon.  Near all modeling systems are taking the low south of us–thus the uncertainty is considerably less than a day or two ago.  (But to be fair, there is always a small chance that all the solutions we have are wrong!)  With the low going south, the cold air can stay in place…in fact, the cold air will be reinforced with flow moving southward out of British Columbia.   But a southward trajectory also lessens the precipitation amounts in the central and northern portions of the state…so NW WA may get very little.
    And there is something else…ANOTHER pulse of snow will occur on Thursday.
    Cutting to the chase, Seattle may well get 6-9 inches of snow during the next two days.  SW Washington could get more–6-12 inches or more.  The mountains, particularly the central Cascades southward could get feet–like 3-4 feet.  In short, one of the biggest events we have had in years.

    http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2012/01/we…

  29. Stellars jays are still blue and pretty. And for reasons unknown, there is still a hummingbird hanging around my mother’s feeder. I can’t imagine how it’s surviving.

    But to say that the NW is colorless… they don’t call it “Ever Green” for nothing.

  30. I miss thunderstorms from back east. Fucking creepy that there’s NO thunder here. NONE. It’s spooky. Inquiring minds want to know what that shit’s about, Cliff Mass.

  31. That’s a cover of a Sparks song. All Hail Ron Mael!

    A fan of Sparks? Cool. I love “Pretending To Be Drunk.”

    Regarding Neko Case, I love Challengers by The New Pornographers. Brilliant album and great title track.

    exciting colour is forbidden in the Northwest.

    When I first moved here I remember reading somewhere that there’s a unspoken rule in Seattle that you don’t paint your house any color that’s not found on the underside of a mushroom. I thought that was so bizarre. It seemed to me that if any city in the U.S. should embrace bright colors, it would be one with such dreary weather. Seattleites still don’t like vivid colors but things have improved. It also seems more colorful in the fall here than I remember from when I first moved here…I think more maple trees have been planted.

  32. This snow poetry from the prof who wrote: “Seattle is not a real city. It’s a paltry imitation of a big city that wishes it were Paris, but isn’t even Des Moines. Iowa, that is. Real city dwellers don’t have to hate other cities, since they’re secure in their own place and its values. “
    Of course your beloved Neko Case is from our grey vale, so I guess there is that on which you can suck. No offense.

  33. The NYE snowstorm aftermath of 2004 (4? 3?) was when I discovered Postal Service on headphones walking to work in the muffled snowquiet. That was a transcendent morning.

  34. @29

    Give that idiot a couple months back in the dreamy rust belt and he’s sure to be fantasizing about old growth forests, snow-capped mountains & crystal clear lakes. Live the dream in your midwestern podunk town though, buddy, but don’t be surprised that most people you go back to want out. You had it and lost it. Thanks for playing!

  36. @35: Oh good, I’m glad the hummingbird is supposed to stick around and doesn’t need flowers (or sugar water) to survive.

    As to the issue of color: ok, we don’t have bright red cardinals, but we have bright yellow banana slugs! Take that!

  37. “Look for a cardinal or a bluejay vivid against the white.”

    That’s very poetic, a beautiful image. However…there’s *nothing* beautiful about snow in Chicago. After about two hours, it turns into a gray-black slushy mess, mixed with salt, grime, soot, smog by-products, dead body parts from mafia killings & who knows what else.

    In fact, the snow turns into another intractable form of matter altogether, which is why dumptrucks need to be brought in in July to cart away the “street warts”, which are the plowed black piles of matter-that-was-formerly-snow-but-will-never-melt.

  39. My eighth grade English teacher made everyone in class memorize and recite Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. She said we’d one day appreciate it, and I actually do. Moving as hell, and appropriate for this week. It’s nice to run through it without having to search for the words.

    Jeep should be sentenced to a lifetime of brostep commercial soundtracks for the atrocity of using that poem. (Don’t they know that suicide is a major undertone, anyway??)

  40. As a Metro driver: (as a determined one whom strives to MOVE. Accidents are charged the same in snow as a clear day. Big Bro is a bitch for us.)

    Hills suck. Stopping for passengers on the up or down of hills, means everyone gets stuck. Walk to the top or the bottom. Most intersections on main Seattle are leveled. If I beacon you to come to me; fuck your ego and your shoes.

    I will only pull to the curb if means I won’t get stuck. Sorry grandma and bitches with stilletos.

    If a bus stops for you, no matter the number, get on. I don’t know what got stuck. I am moving; I will try my hardest to get you to your destination; or as close as I can. Asking “What number are you?” is as stupid as asking “Do you move?”

    Snow sucks for us all. I bring a sleeping bag with me, because I don’t know whether or not I will go home to my boys that night. I do get pissy. Sometimes I go six hours without taking a piss.

    Snow really sucks in Seattle. I am given a bus- many times without chains in already fallen snow. I will do my best. Please do yours.

    Especially if you live near a high density “disabled” neighborhood (15th and John, ect.) Please salt and shovel these bus zones. It is quite hard for me to deploy a disabled passenger in a zone I know they will fall/ skid in. Many of them have daily medical needs like dialysis.
    Metro and the city are already so stressed; me too. Please help them.

    We are all in this together. I can’t control more then my ability to drive the equipment I was handed.

    I expect a little more common sense from you. In bargain; I will try my best. Remember: when you are stranded; so am I- and my family.

    Communication breaks down like your pc at Metro. I am lucky if they know we are stuck and need assistance. It isn’t a lack of effort: it is overload on a radio system that can’t handle a overwhelming crisis.

    Good luck to all of us.

  41. The Snow Man

    One must have a mind of winter
    To regard the frost and the boughs
    Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

    And have been cold a long time
    To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
    The spruces rough in the distant glitter

    Of the January sun; and not to think
    Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
    In the sound of a few leaves,

    Which is the sound of the land
    Full of the same wind
    That is blowing in the same bare place

    For the listener, who listens in the snow,
    And, nothing himself, beholds
    Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
    –Wallace Stevens 1921

    Enjoy your snow, Seattle sloggers.

  42. I just woke up and looked out the window. WHERE THE FUCK IS ALL THE NEW SNOW YOU PROMISED!!!???!! There is ZERO new accumulation in Ravenna since last night. Snowmaggeddon 2012 FAIL!!!!!!

    If people are gong to shit themselves over snow then I expect several feet of snow with our newscasters freaking out so bad that they cut their throats on live tv.

  43. @ 34, can it be? Have you found something positive, something likeable about your non-Philly home? I guess miracles are real.

  44. Oh, wait, “old growth forests?” “Crystal clear” lakes? You’re being sarcastic. Phew, I was concerned you’d hit your head for a moment.

  45. What is the crazy aggresive blue bird that always tries to steal my lunch at Mt Rainier? I always called them Blue Jays (or Camp Robbers). Pretty, but DANG! Watch out!

  47. @32 I think my brother wrote that, not me. I like Seattle more than he does, I think because I don’t live there, just visit occasionally. And while Neko is from the Pacific Northwest, she also tended bar at the Hideout, Chicago’s best music venue. Can’t we share?

    @Kim in Portland: Thanks!

  49. CF, you kinda, sorta, a little tiny bit, maybe, just made me want a flurry or two down here in Southern California. Soup, bread, fireplace, hot chocolate, feeding the squirrels that chatter their way across our fence on a daily basis, it all sounds good.

    They’ll have to send in the National Guard afterwards, but it would be worth it. For a day.

  50. Jeez, enough with the city rivalry already. I live in Seattle and have also lived in Vancouver, Toronto, New York and La Paz, Bolivia. All have their pros and cons and I love them all in different ways.
    Now, bring on the white stuff, bitchizz!!

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