When I hear of urban planning, my mind automatically pictures urban renewal, that widespread failure of the 1960s intended to reinvent cities that were losing population to the suburbs.  I’m a city dweller but nearly every urban renewal project I’ve ever seen or heard about makes me want to head for the hills; the hills of the suburbs.

Fifty years ago the answer to urban blight was to knock down historic homes and commercial buildings in a city center and replace them with open space, but not just any open space, concrete open space.  Uninspired block structures of cement and pre-cast stone were stacked into planters and fountains with a tree or two plunked down in the middle of it all.  Planners believed once the buildings were out of the way, we would all congregate in the sunny open spaces.  They failed to consider a couple of important things.

First, few places are more uncomfortable in the summer than fields of asphalt in the sun.  All that tar and stone and brick absorb the heat and send it right back onto the people walking around on it.   It didn’t take long for citizens to feel they were roasting out there so they stayed inside their air conditioned spaces or sat on the shady porch or front stoop. The sparse vegetation in the plazas struggled for the same reason.   A tulip here and there and the trees surrounded by water-repellent inorganic surface material kept municipal grounds crews busy with constant replacement.

Winter then brought a new problem. The open landscapes were pummeled by winds which picked up speed in the canyons of the taller buildings ringing the open spaces.  The surface was icy and unforgiving, lacking guardrails or even walls to lean against.  Ambitious pedestrians who ventured forth provided a spectacle of entertainment as they slipped and slid across the tundra.

In Syracuse, the open plazas leave me cold.  The Federal Building and Plaza remind me of former communist eastern block projects I saw in East Germany shortly after the Berlin Wall came down.  The Everson Museum is a thrilling and important work of I.M. Pei, however the stone nothing of a space upon which it rests is useless to all but skateboarders.  Not even the addition of berms and plantings a few years ago makes it attractive.  And Hanover Square, our oldest downtown business district, is better now that the clunky and inappropriate paver fountain thing has been removed.  I would still like to see it returned the way it was way back when.

There is an urban planning experiment being studied in other American cities that I would love to see explored in Syracuse, and our one-two punch of city county leaders Mayor Stephanie Miner and County Executive Joannie Mahoney are just the visionaries who could do it.

It’s called GIS, or Geographic Information System.  Using satellite imagery and software called intelligent mapping, a University of California professor named Nicholas de Monchaux and his students are looking at dead urban spaces such as unused roads, alleys and paved areas near industrial parks and highways in San Fransisco, New York, New Orleans and Minneapolis.  Unlike the gigantic and centralized Big Dig project in Boston which relocated the central arterial beneath the ground and opened up a green space where the multiple-lane highway once stood, de Monchaux advocates taking back tiny slivers of unused space and turning it into parks and other green spaces.  He calls it “urban acupuncture” for the thousands of little areas that can be improved with the needs of the neighborhood in mind.

In Syracuse this wouldn’t mean turning the Federal Plaza into a park, as much as I’d love to see that happen, but it could reclaim all the dead zones in our challenged neighborhoods around the city and make them healthier and friendlier places to be.  Developers would follow with new homes and small decentralized neighborhood businesses much like the original settlers of our great American cities, according to the de Monchaux plan.  The idea is not to turn an entire city into rural fields again, but to replace unused concrete and asphalt tracts with space that is used, healthy and admired.

On a fundamental level, this sounds like little more than a community garden project, however it signals 21st century approach to human settlement.  With rampant foreclosures and adjustments in long established migratory patterns created by this Great Recession, we have an opportunity to pause and merge vision with computer software, creativity with pragmatism, and most hopeful of all, we have the chance to be better urban planners than our predecessors of fifty years ago.

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In Central New York it’s the Blizzard of ‘66, but in New England they talk about the Blizzard of 1978.  I was a junior in college at Salve Regina in Newport, Rhode Island back then.  This Friday marks the 32nd anniversary of that blockbuster event no one saw coming.

Lacking the sophisticated forecasting equipment available today, meteorologists predicted the low pressure system forming off the Carolina coast would move north and produce 6 inches of snow.   They didn’t foresee the storm would merge with high pressure pulling down from Canada and stall over Martha’s Vineyard for four days.   The hurricane-strength monster blew winds of 83 miles per hour with gusts reaching 111. Snow fell at a rate of two to four inches per hour.  A series of high tides in the New Moon flooded coastal communities and wiped out 1,700 homes.   By the time businesses and schools closed early that first day, roads were impassable.  People famously abandoned their cars on the highways around Boston and others died trying to stay warm in their cars as the  accumulating snow blocked off tail pipes.

My world was small at that time.  Classes at Salve were canceled for more than a week so my friends and I celebrated the huge snowfall with the predictable snowmen, snow angels and snowball fights, and then we got down to the business of digging out cars in the dorm parking lots.

I had a boat of a chocolate brown 1973 Oldsmobile 98 with rear wheel drive, as useless in the snow as every other car on the road in those days, but my pal Sue Bianchi had a precursor to an SUV.  There were no transfer cases like the kind make by New Process Gear to switch between two and four-wheel drive so we had to remove the lug nuts from all four wheels and switch them with something else, the detail of which I can’t remember,  in order to get all four wheels into gear.  It was rugged and super cool and one of the rare vehicles allowed on the roads that paralyzed week, when driving anything besides a four-wheel drive truck could get you a ticket.

With classes called off, campus got kind of boring after a while and when they allowed cars on the roads again I decided to drive home to Worcester to hang out there.  That’s when I learned the perils of relying on the National Guard from Tennessee to plow snow.  I was cruising along the relatively cleaned up highway when I came around a bend and saw where someone had plowed snow until they stopped.  It was a wall of white smack dab across the entire passing lane.  Were it not for quick reflexes and space in the lane beside me, I might have hit that wall head on and become another victim of the storm.

Those are my memories of the biggest snow storm of my life.  To see some photos, cut and paste the link below.  You’ll find photos from Boston television station WCVB.

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/slideshow/weather/15085523/detail.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Thebostonchannel%2Flocal+%28TheBostonChannel.com+-+News%29&utm_content=Twitt

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As a product of New England, with its history of pro sports teams from Boston, I’ve never been much of a college sports fan.  I don’t even know the roster of the Syracuse University teams from year to year.  For as much as New Englanders like their hockey from Northeastern University and the football from Boston College, they really are a professional sports lot.  I say they’re missing something.  You haven’t lived until you’ve watched a basketball game at the Carrier Dome.

I was privileged to watch the Syracuse-Georgetown game on Monday night.   There is nothing like a classic rivalry to put electricity in the air.  Army/Navy,  Red Sox/Yankees,  Leno/Letterman, Couric/Palin; A good contest makes you sit up straighter to watch.

I sometimes wonder what I would miss most if I ever moved away from Syracuse.  The abundance of fresh water is at the top of the list; Lake Ontario, the Finger Lakes, the Thousand Islands.  I would lament the loss of decent skiing 20 minutes from my house.  My sister in South Carolina has to drive eight hours to reach a little hill in Virginia.  I would miss the wineries throughout Upstate New York, and the Adirondacks so close.  Niagara Falls is a few hours away and route 81 can easily get you to Canada or through Pennsylvannia to the nation’s Capital with relative ease, and without the nightmare I-95 corridor that tortures New Englanders.

And S.U. basketball games at the Dome.  They are a thrill.  There is so much to see that doesn’t even occur on the court.  The student section itself is worthy of a television show; absolutely everyone wears orange shirts and entertains that giant venue with their various traditions and chants.  It makes you feel you’re 19 again.  I attended a small liberal arts college housed in mansions on cliffs above the Atlantic Ocean, but when I watch the student section during a game I think I should have come here instead.

Equally impressive are the thousands of Central New Yorkers who make their way through the biting cold to manage parking restrictions and snow banks to get to the Dome and cheer the team.   We are lucky to have a team of S.U.’s caliber, but the team is fortunate as well to have this level of community support.

Which brings me to this exciting 2009-10 team.  Everyone is talking about them, even people like me who don’t normally talk about them.  I watched the last ten minutes of their contest with DePaul today and warmed with pride as the announcers warned a national television audience that Syracuse was too good a team this year to go down in an 18 point defeat.  They didn’t.  As we all know, they turned it around and won by two.

It may be 10 degrees outside with plenty of winter left on this last day of January.  But when the ‘Cuse is in the House and climbing up in the ranks, winter is the very best season of all.

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I am famous for picking things up with a passion and dropping them just as quickly.  The carcasses of my various hobbies and interests line the halls of my memory; crewel embroidery, needlepoint, smocking, rose gardening, landscape painting, jewelry, furniture refinishing, calligraphy….just as the oil portraits of ancestors hang on the halls of English manor houses.

When I began this blog one year ago I thought it would be like any other blog.  My sisters, one or two of my children and handful of very close friends might check in from time to time, but it would otherwise be an obscure URL on the increasingly crowded world wide web.  What did I know?

I’ve “met” new friends who are beyond dear to me for their loyalty and support.  Those sisters and children and friends are more faithful readers than I expected them to be.  And in writing about the murder of a high school classmate in 1975, I learned I wasn’t the only one who tossed and turned for 34 years over a life that ended too soon.  This blog is a source of catharsis, of community and of hope.  I am reminded that everything is possible, still.

I’ve been busy of late; providing image consulting for a political candidate, writing content for other web sites and enjoying the company of my first-born child, my only daughter who moved home after a year and a half on the west coast.  Now at 23, Natalie is an extraordinary young woman who I enjoy more than I thought any mother could enjoy any child.  We laugh a connected and knowing laugh that is difficult to stop and I wonder sometimes how I created this splendid human being.

I overheard Natalie tell a friend on the phone today that we’ve been doing everything together and she’s having a great time of it.  Imagine.  A young woman boasting that she enjoys time with her mother.  How lucky we are.  Natalie reminded me we had a rough patch several years ago when she was a teenager, but I can  honestly say I didn’t see it.  I knew she wanted total independence back then, far more independence than she could handle or would be good for her, and in ignoring her anger about that, I saw it as nothing unusual.

So my apologies for neglecting my blogging lately.  I hope you understand.  Maureengreencny.com is not just another hobby I picked up and put down.  Unlike the jewelry supplies and the acrylic paint which sit on shelving in the basement, my computer is always close by.  I’ll do better to stay in touch.

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Regular readers of this blog know we are following the updates of a fellow reader, a military man I know only as “Doc”.

Doc left many comments here throughout 2009 and at the end of the year he told me he would be deployed, though he could not say where.  Here is his story, emailed from overseas.

I have no way of verifying the facts of this story, I can’t even be sure Doc is who he says he is.  But after a year’s worth of thoughtful comments, I somehow trust him.

Maureen~

War is hell, but sometimes there is that hope of life, just as I am about to share with you….

Sometimes you just need to believe in something.

The saying “there are no atheists in the foxholes,” may be, for the most part, true. I know it because military experience led me to conclusions and connections, which I otherwise would never have made.

In today’s world, we are constantly being hammered down by dark happenings in our world and our country. We are faced with the hard truth, so frequently that we harden our hearts just to make it through the day. If we have good dreams, it is cause for celebration. After all, our days lately are like an acid ocean, their burning tides eroding the peace of our very souls.

But someone once said to me there are bad things in the world which we cannot see. Some African tribes call these bad things Shetani. Other cultures in other times had different names for them, but they all believed them to be dangerous, dark and evil. Of course, if you believe in such things, you likely believe in the opposite – that the balance is maintained by beings, which represent all, which is good and bright.

Before 2010 I would have shrugged all of this off. But by the time it was 2010, I had been in Afghanistan for some time, driving the streets of Kabul and the surrounding countryside. I was  in charge or an” advisor” most of the time, and no one of any importance. My friend, Al, was a U.S. Army career enlisted guy. We swapped positions on the vehicle often – but always rode together. You just develop a trust with certain people. You just know that if the chips are down, they will have your back.

The chips weren’t looking too good one evening in a town called Lowgar. Our convoy had got stuck in a back alley late at night. We were boxed in, with high-rise buildings barely visible in the distance, just beyond the light of the street and the vehicles. For a long time, we couldn’t move forward or backward. I was sure this situation was an ambush, so I was scanning the distant high windows for a trace of movement, or the flash of an RPG, which I was sure would destroy the rear vehicle in the convoy and make retreat from the bottleneck impossible.

With all the night vision and topnotch equipment being fielded today, the situation was similar to one in any conflict since Korea or Vietnam – maybe even WWII. In fact, my weapon had been made in 1999, never fired – and remained in a box until I was deployed to Fort Hood and from there became attached to the 1st Calvary– and the Joint Task Force.

All this was going through my head at the time, as I rode in that vehicle and eyed those distant windows. That assumption could have been the end of us, because right next to the driver’s window – almost close enough to reach out and touch, was a weathered wooden shutter with peeling turquoise paint. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember suddenly realizing that it was there – suddenly understanding that a grenade flipped into the hummer from that window would accomplish the same ends as an RPG from the high-rises.

And as this dawned on me, the shutter began to slowly open.

The driver, my friend Al, was yelling to me… “The window – the window!” I got a good sight-picture on the thing and flipped off the safety. I wondered how long I should wait – put my finger on the trigger, searched for any feeling about it all, and realized there was none. Suddenly understood that I was simply going to identify the threat and shoot, just as I had trained to do.

As I put a little bit more pressure on the trigger, there was no nervousness, no nothing. The shutter kept gliding quietly open, but ever-so-slowly. I realized I would have to react very quickly. And as it came completely open, and I recognized that it was a human shape framed in the window, I knew I was prepared to finish it.

You see, for two months we have lived amongst the Afghans. We have grown to know the countryside and the people – even some of the language. We understood the mission and had already accomplished most of the goals within three weeks of being in-country.

By that night, we had just been extended indefinitely, a year in country will now be an eternity.

As I write this, I can only speak for myself……

I had long ago previously lost something important. I can’t put that in words, maybe it has something to do with the men and women whom we have lost, the countless number of dead and wounded. It simply is what it is. Some of you reading, you may know what I mean. For those of you who don’t, you’re very lucky.

But as I focused on that shape in the window, it seemed to light up. A woman was there, shades of blue light in a haze around her. She could have been Afghan, but there was something unusual about her.

You see, I had the muzzle of that weapon sighted in on the center of her chest. We weren’t that far away from each other. She looked directly into my eyes. Al was screaming – “Do you see her? Oh my God, Doc, do you see her?” Her gaze was steady – impossibly so. With a loaded weapon aimed directly at her, she didn’t flinch, duck, yell out or say something harsh and accusing. In fact, she didn’t do anything a normal human would do. I could see her eyes and her face clearly. There was nothing there but compassion.

That’s when I felt it, it was something different. I was different, somehow. Something that I had given up on, or maybe something that I had set down or lost somewhere, had been found and given back to me.

So for those of you out there who need something to believe in; who have walked the dark roads for so long with nothing to give you light and faith and happiness, know this. The vision of that woman was a kind of proof that there is more than just beauty out there – maybe that there is more than darkness and demons looking for us, and maybe that there are some things real and tangible working on our side, and looking after us all.

To this day, and every day for the rest of my life, I have known and will know that I have seen an Angel.

And she offered me forgiveness and peace.

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It looks like the earthquake that occurred one week ago is on it’s way to one-word infamy.  Like “Katrina” and “The Tsunami”,  the temblor that ruined most everything in Haiti might forever be called “the earthquake”.  Or maybe not.  Perhaps the one word to describe chronic human suffering like this is simply “Haiti”.  Here are some random observations:

Texting is a real easy way to donate money.  No check to write, stamp to lick, number to call, VISA information to dictate, no website to type; all you do is pick up your cellphone and text 90999.  Michelle Obama asked us to and we did in record numbers.  To date this is the largest amount ever donated to a cause.

Talk about multi-tasking. CNN’S Dr. Sanjay Gupta was among the first journalists to arrive in Haiti.  When he wasn’t reporting on the desperate conditions, he was wrapping the head of an injured 15 day old infant, operating on a 12 year old girl who had concrete in her brain, and when a field hospital of Belgian doctors evacuated on alleged orders of the United Nations, Gupta remained  and single-handedly administered care all night long to about 25 patients.  The next morning he tweeted an apology for not making air time for his regular weekend program.  I know, because I’m one of his 1,193,993 followers, a number that grows by the day.  The guy is amazing.  And handsome.  And scary smart.  The best reason to watch CNN. Maybe TV.

As Shepherd Smith distinguished himself for Fox News during the Katrina debacle, I believe Gupta will personify graceful reporting that made the most difference in Haiti.  Props to ABC’s Diane Sawyer too for landing in Haiti direct from Afghanistan.  The woman is 64 years old.

God must really love the Haitian people.  My Aunt Marion, a devout Catholic, says God chooses his favorite people to suffer the most.   With all the natural disasters befalling Haiti, God can ease up on the love, just a little bit.  They’ve had enough.

Now that much of Haiti has been leveled by nature’s giant wrecking ball, there is a marvelous opportunity for regrowth done right this time.  Hopefully the good will and funds will continue to pour in.  If the Haitian Government can get out of its own way architects and contractors will design and build stronger buildings to withstand the natural disasters the island seems to attract.

The media appear disingenuous, traveling into disaster zones with all the food and water they need, while the subjects of their reports are dying.   Crews come fully contained with all their own supplies so as not to drain local resources, but still, the stock answer by every network, that they can’t help people with food or water but they can help by “telling their story”, quickly got a little old.

I’m not blaming reporters for having their own supplies, but it does underscore a continuing problem.  Journalists made their way into New Orleans after the hurricane when the military didn’t seem to know how.  Several years later, it’s the same in Haiti.  Every news outlet manages to get planes, staff and supplies into a disaster zone, but governments can’t.  Are they too big for the task?  Too bureaucratic? Too complacent?

This earthquake  mobilized ordinary people on twitter, texts and blogs in a decentralized form of communication that is taking over.  Previously known as a “grass roots” effort, viral information makes Phone companies, airlines, and governments seem out of touch.  The phone companies and U.S. State Department were overwhelmed with panicked callers in the days after the quake. Most people only got a recording.   It was Facebook and twitter and the internet that spread the word of how bad things were.

In the end, for all the high-tech ways people are connecting to this disaster, Haiti tonight is in the Middle Ages.  With no electricity, no food, scarce water, there are corpses in the streets and broken bones held in cardboard splints.  Haiti remains a place of profound suffering and despair.

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From the folder titled “the grass is always greener” comes this recent revelation.  Maybe it’s not such a curse to be the oldest in the family, no matter how many studies confirm the first child absorbs all the unrealistic expectations of the parents.  I’ve spent my entire life feeling disadvantaged by my birth order when its really the baby who deserves the greater sympathy.

Sure, I got the new clothes first, but I never thought it worth the price.  I was all by myself in leading the way for Karen and Susan.  I had to go to school first, had to take piano lessons first, had to step forward and politely greet my parent’s friends first, had to speak for all three of us in fact in any formal circumstance since I learned how to speak before my sisters did and was therefore the expert, and I had the first and earliest curfew in the history of curfews; 10:00 pm as an 18 year old.  By the time Susan was 18 my parents were more interested in getting sleep than wondering where she was. But how would I know?  I was stuck being the first of the kids to have to go away to college.  Poor me.

Maureen, Karen and the Baby

Now that I’m a parent I see both sides.  Natalie had the first and best of everything, but she had that first expectation thing placed upon her too.  We thought she could get into Harvard and we worked the system, pushing the grades, hiring tutors, visiting campuses.  She didn’t get into Harvard and she’s none the worse for it, so Christian has a different life.  Wherever he wants to go that “makes him happy” is good enough for us.  Score one for the baby.

On the other hand, a dear friend of mine has three boys in their teens and early 20s.  Their father addresses the older two by name but the youngest who isn’t younger by much doesn’t get to have a name, at least not in the company of his father.  Dad changes the inflection of his voice, almost like he’s talking to a girl and says “Hi Buddy”.  It’s hard to be taken seriously when you’re considered the mascot of the family, one small step above the dog.

When Natalie was in high school she used her wiles to squeeze every available penny from the family budget.  Even some pennies that weren’t available.  Christian?  Poor kid.  The well is dry and if he wants something new, he first has to sell something old.   All that practice and discipline gives him an entrepreneurial bent rare for a kid his age and his friends and friend’s parents tell him so.  The  family doesn’t seem to appreciate this very much.  Everyone chuckles at him like he’s still in diapers and just keeps being adorable.

Even when the children were real little and people inquired if I had boys or girls, I said I had a girl, two boys and a baby.  Our infant production was ending at four so I couldn’t bring myself to assign any permanent gender for the last one.  Christian was not considered anything besides a baby for years.

Charlie, Harry, Natalie, the Baby, Mom

Was it being treated like a baby that had the antithetical outcome of producing perhaps the most mature?  Or was it all those years of exposure to the interests and actions of the older siblings?  The first three had hours upon hours of child-centered music in the car; Raffi or Sharon, Lois and Bram.  Just as Christian was getting old enough to enjoy this stuff too, the dial turned to Top 20 hits.  Natalie, Harry and Charlie wouldn’t be caught dead listening to music for babies anymore so  I had the choice of having anarchy thrust upon me by the older three, or the lone toddler with no rights rocking in his car seat and belting out at the top of his lungs the rap lyrics of raunchy love songs.  The only reason I now admit to the option I chose is I believe the statute of limitations on charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor have passed.

Back to my beloved sister Susan, who absorbed the more relaxed parenting style to grow into a funny, personable and easy going 50 year old; a 50 year old who is still described by Karen and me as such a “great kid”.  Karen is 51.  I am 52.

Perhaps I was wrong all my life to assume the oldest carries the birth order baggage.  Maybe the baby of the family bears a special burden too.

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I have found treasures of all descriptions on craigslist.org but by far the greatest of all is my handyman Mike.

My initial call for help with my crumbling kitchen windows last summer turned into the refurbishment of every window in my 1926 Tudor home.  When that project was finished, Mike started replacing rotting exterior trim.  He stuffed pink insulation into every large gap he saw, and caulk into the small ones.  My December National Grid bill was 30 percent lower than December of ‘08 even though it was a colder month this year.

I would have done all of this years ago had money not been an object, but with four growing children headed to college, money was an object so I put off the repairs.  Mike was so conscientious and reasonably priced I ran out of excuses to procrastinate any further.  I joked through the many months of Mike on the job that he was the Miracle of my Summer.

Summer turned to autumn and a host of new projects.  Could he paint the house, strip the exterior doors, sand down the tops of the radiator boxes with varnish grown cloudy with age?  Would he help me design and replace the top of the built-in corner cabinet in the dining room that was ruined when the former owners cut a speaker through the woodwork?  Those doors that stick; could he plane them down?  The brass hardware on the windows.  It was tarnished and painted and stained.  Might he remove them all so I could polish them one by one, and then could he put them back on? Two latches per window, four screws per latch?  Would he install the curtain rod into the masonry wall in the sun room?  When Mike saw me hauling leaves into the woods behind the house, he devoted an afternoon to dragging the heavy tarps that I loaded up with heavy damp oak leaves.  By then I was telling him he was the Miracle of my Year.

Well, it’s a whole new miracle year.  Two nights ago I did something really dumb.  I dumped coffee grounds into the sink instead of walking them into the bushes in the cold outdoors.  The sink plugged up.  Of course.

This isn’t the first time I’ve done something dumb like that so I’m pretty good at dismantling the pipes beneath the sink to free the clogged spaghetti, or one too many egg shells.  This time, the clog would not budge.  I couldn’t even find it.  The plastic pipes were clean when I took them apart.  So once again I called Mike.

I knew it was a bad sign when Mike couldn’t budge the clog either.  As I was cooking dinner with the downstairs bathroom sink, Mike tried everything before declaring that I needed a new waste pipe in the basement.  The old galvanized pipe was likely so narrow with decades of sludge and deteriorated metal that nothing would go through, no matter how much he snaked and plunged.

Mike goes spelunking under my kitchen sink

This morning Mike arrived with his customary smile, good manners, tools and Superhero powers and in short order he gave me a brand spanking new plastic PVC pipe!   Who needs perfume and baubles?  That stuff’s for sissies.  I’ve got PVC!  All the way to the 6 inch cast iron waste main!  It’s Christmas morning all over again!   The water flows like crazy.

Now the scary part.  Check out the pipe.  I asked Mike if it’s the worst he’s seen but by the time he gets called to old houses he says every galvanized pipe looks this way.  Thank goodness. I wouldn’t want him to think less of me for keeping pipes like this, but he did ask what lesson I had learned from all of this.  Then the smile left my face and my eyes cast downward, sort of like my dog when she does a bad thing, and I told Mike I would never be so dumb as to put coffee grounds down the sink again.

Yup, that tiny hole is all the clearance left after 8 decades of draining the kitchen sink

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1. The back steps are my extra refrigerator

2. I enjoy the January utility bill

3. I love watching icicles tear at my gutters

4. The line of salt on my boots reminds me of ocean waves.

5. I can wear every article of clothing I own.  All at once.

6. It’s fun to open those hand warmers in packages

7. The lawn mower doesn’t wake me up early in the morning

8. More space for us when the Snowbirds leave

9. You can’t lose sunglasses when you never wear them

10. Hair dries faster

What do you “love” about winter.  Please write in.

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