LISTEN, SNOW IS FALLING

It’s a snowy winter here in Wisconsin. I feel confident in saying that even though winter doesn’t even start for another week yet. It’s snowed about once every 48 hours for the last couple weeks. That can get disconcerting, especially when your lot in life is to be the designated Tender of the Driveway.

So tonight I waited for the city plows to come through. I live on a semi-thoroughfare (transportation geeks would probably classify it as a ‘collector street’), so we get plowed right in the middle of the snow removal. If you don’t get out quickly after the plows come through, the plowed-up snow congeals and freezes into something nearly as difficult to remove as a sitting appeals-court judge.

Tonight I got lucky and actually heard the plows coming down the street, so I rushed right out to shovel the end of the driveway while the snow was still soft. It wasn’t too bad. In about eight minutes, I had the driveway reopened.

I was just about to go inside when I glanced at the streetlight across the street and noticed the falling snow reflected in that circus-peanut-colored glow. The flakes were small, really more shards than flakes, but they were falling so gently, it seemed like they would stop in mid-air if somebody just said “Hold on a minute!”

Then a little tuft of wind swirled up from the ground and blew the snow back up into the air. You never really get to see the wind, but I saw it tonight, different currents going in different directions right next to one another.

I stood on the front porch for a good ten minutes, listening to . . . well, listening to nothing. Maybe the distant rumble of snowplows clearing parking lots, and snowblowers unclogging someone else’s driveway, but that was it. It’s never quiet where we live . . . but it is tonight.

A truck came down the street. Usually you can hear tire roar inside the house, but tonight, it’s like the truck was on tiptoe. The snow kept dancing in the light while all around me was the blissful sound of nothingness. If I had any cares before I went out to shovel, they’re long gone. Sometimes it’s nice to stand on your porch, alone with the city, watching little crystals of ice trying their hardest to resist the call of the earth.

TBP SALUTES NSU

Second in an irregular series

Today, since we are snowed in the house and stuck in the basement, we here at TBP turn our attention to another of America’s oft-overlooked institutions of higher learning. Travel with us now to the pleasant, pretty prairie town of Aberdeen, South Dakota, home of Northern State University. Founded in . . . OK, I can’t find out when it was founded. Either 1889 or 1901. Anyway, NSU is a smallish public university with an enrollment of approximately 3000 students. While its roots are in teacher training, NSU now offers degrees in 38 different fields.

We can personally vouch for Dr. LaFave, the dean of the School of Fine Arts, having taken a history of jazz course from him back in the day. Dude knows his stuff, and he knows how to teach.

The NSU Wolves compete at the NCAA Division II level as members of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference.

NSU, we at TBP salute you!