On February

Pitchers and catchers this week. Proof positive that a benevolent God exists.

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February in Averill Park, NY can be, on occasion, daunting. Winters here are fairly serious business; at over a thousand feet of elevation, snow can fall with a vengeance. I have lived my entire life in Upstate NY, so I am certainly acclimated to winter. One drives more carefully, keeps firewood on hand, and passes the time at home with family and friends. We've been here in AP almost seven years now, and our first winter here, on the weekend of my 44th birthday, we saw 34 inches of the white stuff in about 40 hours.

This February is more than a little different. As I look out the window, there's MAYBE five inches on the ground, and we are at about half our normal snowfall for this time of year. Perhaps this is the reason the situation in the Mid-Atlantic states cracks me the hell up.

Washington DC is known for gridlock of many types; political, traffic, and otherwise. They are equally well-known for becoming absolutely panic-stricken at the arrival of flakes of snow, much less feet of it. What passes for a dusting up here is Armageddon in DC, and it is hilarious to watch firsthand.

My oldest brother turned me on to this phenomenon some 20 years ago. Dave was working in DC for our Congressman, and would tell me tales of snow-mania which I generally found apocryphal until about eight years ago, when I found myself in a February meeting just outside DC, in Reston, VA.

The meeting's going well, and moving along agreeably when one of the participants notices some flurries just beginning out a window. At the mention of this, people just start to pack up and leave, rather abruptly ending the proceedings. After the initial shock of all of this wears off, our little NY contingent heads for our rental car for the trip to National Airport, and home.

The radio comes on, and a damned-near apoplectic DJ is explaining that schools are closing, and non-essential government workers should head home in advance of the two inches of snow expected by midnight. I am not, by the way, making any of this up.

I reflected upon that meeting rather a lot recently, with the absolute belting the Mid-Atlantic region has absorbed the last few weeks. I do not minimize this; four feet of snow in ten days is a hardship anywhere, and in DC, where folks just don't handle one-tenth of that well, it must be a hardship in the extreme. I guess it's the irony that our area has just missed these storms over and over that I find so amusing.

Fear not, Washington: Spring is coming, and this will all soon be just a memory. In the meantime, you might want to grab some firewood.

Until next time,

Excelsior!