Snowfall makes the world turn over

It's started.

Here it is Sunday morning and the snow started last night.

I noticed it just when heading off to bed, more as a sudden frosting of white on the street than a dance of flakes in the air.

Perhaps it was too cold.  They fall in a different way, the snow is finer when it's colder.

No matter.  It was there.

Only two night before, at sunset, the sky was crystal clear, starless and open.

The crescent moon was etched in the sky, clear over the house across the way.  Cold light.  Warm light.

And so now, here we are.  In the last few minutes since I started a warmer snow is falling.  The flakes are larger, fluffier - more New England, I suppose.

I hear a sound that hasn't been in my ears since last year - a deep, rumbling scrape, the unique sound of a wide-bladed snow shovel pushed against red brick.

You will also hear trucks backing up, the beep of reverse warnings will become much more frequent as trucks plow out driveways.

The giant snowplows that were half hidden by growths of weeds during the Summer were dug out a month ago and were loaded on the front of big pickup trucks.

All of them owned by folks who make a tidy sum moving the snow - sums needed now more than ever.

I hope to stay optimistic during all of this - my personal situation, though at times rather thin, is fairly steady - but others who are losing jobs are finding this Winter has the cast of a killer - here in New England we can see how vulnerable people can be even to the most basic forces of Nature.

Back home in Tulsa you can still be humbled by the force of a tornado.  In Boston - even Portland - snow can b lovely, it can be a nuisance, occasionally dangerous - but never deadly.

Until things turn around - and I'm specifically counting on Barak Obama's election to do it - deadly may be back in play.

So - a siren sounds, a fire truck goes by on Congress Street, I see it flash by through Bosnia.

"Now is the Winter of our discontent made glorious Summer by this noble Son of York".

I have a feeling - maybe because I've not had my coffee or breakfast yet, but even so - I have a feeling that we will all be called to give a great deal of ourselves, more than what a self-referentially generous people usually give.

We shall see - but perhaps now we'll have a better chance of seeing together.