The southeast has just experienced a record snowstorm. Springfield, Massachusetts, my home experienced snow in early November, but right now we just have seasonal, slightly lower temperatures, today registering 27 degrees Fahrenheit. I love my snow. I’m a bit jealous that we have no forecasts of snow on the near weather horizon. It’s almost Christmas and I want snow.
Think about what snow does. It creates an architecture that just blows my mind, That old rubbish barrel your neighbor keeps on the side of his garage becomes a work of art. The trees are laced with icy drips of white and bring out sighs of memories of our pasts.
Kahlill Gibran, the great 20th century philosopher commented, “Kindness is like snow – it beautifies everything it covers.” Snow does beautify our landscape and I believe in Gibran’s message, that kindness beautifies everything also. Is snow a motivator? I know that kindness is a motivator. When I am a recipient of kindness, it stops me in my tracks. It forces me to consider my behaviors towards others. When I am a practitioner of kindness, I receive the present of knowing I was helpful; no better present exists. So is snow a motivator, I ask again.
Pietro Aretino, although an Italian playright and satirist, was not known for romantic thoughts. Still he quoted, “Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.” What did he mean? Think about those long winter days, too cold to run around and play outside, but a harbor for kicking back to dream and think and plot a mystery. Definitely from my mind, winter is a motivator.
And finally, winter is just important in and of itself as a counterweight for summer as stated by John Steinback, “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
Winter is important and not simply a struggle to get through. Long cold days bring out my productivity and snow is the art of glamourizing my external environment, while I type.
Enjoy your day. K. B. Pellegrino
Kathleen lives with her husband Joe and their dog Othello midst their large family in Springfield, Massachusetts.
"My love affair with plots, murder, mystery, spies and, in general, with crime novels began at an early age. I read and read – probably have read 2,000 crime novels since then. Even at an early age, I developed my own plots if only to cover up my misdeeds to the chagrin of my family and teachers. Some less creative called it fibbing!
Now I write from the love of plot – of people and their ways –of life – of philosophy – about crime –about the sociopath/psychopath."
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