We've Got Our Snowbanks Back!

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It's very strange.  Up until late yesterday afternoon we could do several things that we'd almost forgotten was in our vocabulary of action.

Namely things like:

- passing two cars on the same street at the same time

- walking on sidewalks rather than in the plowed street because dodging the cars is actually safer than the ice on the bricks

- wearing one - maybe even two - fewer layers to ward off the cold

Stuff like that.

Last night - Sunday - I got out of the Orchard and there was just a steady cold rain falling - the towel I'd used to cover Mrs. Beadle's front windshield was soaked and superfluous.

It only took the ten minute drive to see the rain suddenly convert to heavy, clammy, clingy snow - by the time I'd left the parking garage the sidewalks were gone, the red of the brick covered by white.

The change was sudden, dramatic, slightly scary.  What was almost warm, almost clear, almost comfortable was transformed instantly into a threatening mass of heavy white

Once I was home I had to head out for a meeting at Adira's apartment about our tango community.  It was fairly productive and I learned a bit of history about how the whole thing started.

That will be the subject of a future post.

We had to break by 10 p.m. since a parking ban was going to go into effect at that time.  I walked E (TML's bass player) back to her place.  It had been snowing for a bit more that two and a half hours by that point and the world had been transformed.

What had been clean (well, somewhat clean) and dry had been blanketed.  The cover was cold, wet, clinging to the branches and muffling the sounds of cars as they struggled up the hill of State Street.

This called me out.  I had to be in it.  

A walk along Doctor's Row led me to Local 188, one of the better - or at least "open" - bistros along Congress Street.

I had time to rework the setting of my simple little camera while working on a single-malt.  Very refreshing work.

There was a very small crowd in the bistro, divided into two groups - those absorbed in their own company, either loud or intimately quiet, and those, like me, who were storm watchers, caught up the in the intensity of the moment.

Once my camera was prepped - and once I'd finished my drink - I layered up and headed out into the wet.

Local 188 is by Longfellow Square.  The Square is dominated by a more-than-life-sized statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Portland's Poet Laureate.

From there it was an easy walk down Congress to the Portland Museum of Art, which dominates Congress Sqaure.  The light at Congress and High was much brighter, it's the busiest intersection of the town.

This is also the home of the Children's Museum of Maine, on whose board I sit.  

All told it was a sudden, intense change in the aspect of the city - there was a lull, which frankly fooled no-one, in the hard part of Winter.

I love this kind of change, even if it does make life very dangerous for those of my friends caught out in it.  

A lot of reports came in today about lost power, abandoned cars - and the sudden kindness of strangers seeing themselves in the plights of those lost in the weather.

Perhaps we will learn something from it.