The Weight of Winter

This year's version of Winter has been a bit relentless. Started early and we are now in mid-February and we have finally gotten a couple of days above freezing. There have been some sunny days, but they were the crystal-cold kind of days that make it hard to understand why the sun isn't doing its damn job...all show and no heat. We topped the record for snowfall a week or so ago and I'm pretty sure we will add a few more inches before the deal is done.

 I've been down to our beach a couple of times to see the ice up close and personal. I don't know if the lake has completely frozen over, but at least on our beach things are locked up, but in a way that suggests some dynamism.  Big plates of ice lie stacked and shuffled like decks of cards all along the shore.

 When you see these huge slabs of ice tossed around and jumbled up it gives you an additional sense of respect for those people who have tried to traverse the Arctic in attempts to get to the pole. Trying to sled, ski or walk any distance on these surfaces must have been grueling. The scale of the slabs in the Arctic and the disarray of the ice-scape must be on a much larger scale than our local version.

 In a totally unrelated train of thought. I finished a second piece, a pretty labor intensive work, derived from photos I took of the cathedral at Strasbourg. I did a smaller study earlier and with what I learned, I did a bit more elaborate version. Happy with the results. It was one of several works which made use of a lot of  different yellows. I needed to get away to something a little warmer than the blue-grey palette of daily life.

To add to the weight of winter, this week saw another horrific school shooting. And although a lot of factors go into the mix to get this result. The fact that in this country you can buy an assault weapon of the kind that was used is appalling. Children deserve better than this, but legislative cowardice is not likely to go away any time soon. And of course it would only be one small part of a bigger problem.