The Immortality of Winter

February 13th, 2020

This winter is breaking me. The sinus infection will not die, and neither will this immortal winter weather. 

After two snow days in a row at the end of last week, and a cancelled school event on Saturday, I was raring to get the girls to school on Monday. And for once, we did have school, although looking out the window, I felt trepidation. The snow was really coming down…. onto a thick sheet of existing ice. 

As I was steering the Subie down the hill on our dirt road, I started sliding… and did not stop until we reached a flat spot. Yikes. I stopped, took a deep breath, and forged on. But then the trash truck came and ran me off the road. Right into a ditch.

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By the time I got my car pulled out, I realized we weren’t going to school again.

Work is going to hell from all the enforced time off; my sinuses can go fuck themselves; I have a lousy bruise on my head where I smashed my skull into the ice the other day when my Sorrels slipped out from under me.

But it is quite beautiful out, no?

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Last weekend, when my daughters were overnighting with my mom, I took the opportunity for a leisurely walk into “town” for a storytelling event at the Grange. Along the way, I scouted for photo opps one can only get in cold, desolate places like Vermont, such as icicles dropping off rusty barbed wire fences against a backdrop of fir trees. 

It was deathly quiet out there, as only winter can be. Maybe one car passed me for the entire 2.5-mile walk. The encrusted snow in the fields and the icicles weighing down the trees imposed an ominous-slash-peaceful silence on the landscape. No bird songs. No frog tunes. No cow moos. Nothing.

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Two years ago my wonderful husband gifted me snowshoes to placate me through the New England winters. Now I am realizing I will also need cleats. The key to winter in Vermont is gear. 

Case in point: yesterday another gift from my husband arrived — these cozy shearling slippers handmade to order by the local company Shephard’s Flock. They are cheering me up immensely this morning as we have yet another 2-hour delay due to snow!

Spring, wherefore art thou?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

What I’m eating:

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Homemade Valentine’s chocolate! All it takes is some coconut oil, some cacao powder, a chocolate mold, and a dream — and a willingness to spend hours making what you could buy relatively cheaply but with not nearly the love. 

What I’m listening to:

Just started listening to the podcast Code Switch starting with the 2-part episode Black Parents Take Control, Teachers Strike Back. Super interesting deep-dive into a period of racial strife in the Brooklyn school systems in the ’60s.

What I’m watching:

Still loving on Joaquin Phoenix. His Oscars acceptance speech was on point. Love a person who can blend passion and compassion and be totally weird about it. Jon and I watched Joker last weekend. I loved it, and it was nothing like I expected. I hear a lot of people hated this movie. I understand why. No one wants to face the way our society sidelines the mentally ill. 

What I’m reading:

After 2,000 Years, These Seeds Have Finally Sprouted: Six date seeds as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls are now flourishing as trees on a kibbutz

I just finished the book Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver and I loved it with all my heart!

What I’m working on:

A while back I wrote a long-form piece for the global executive search and leadership consulting firm Spencer Stuart called The CPG CEO of The Future: Insight into the Transformation of CPG Leadership, which was based on interviews with leaders of 15 big consumer goods products companies from Coca-Cola to Unilever to L’Oréal.

To support that piece, I also wrote three short blog posts:

This is a great example of how content marketing works! Keeping materials fresh and in front of potential customers online.

 

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One Response to “The Immortality of Winter”

  1. [...] “Prep for Prep and the Faultlines in New York’s Schools” in The New Yorker — an interesting addendum to the Code Switch post I mentioned a few weeks ago. [...]

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