A New Year, A New Beginning, and Why I Hate Winter

photo: Light And Shadow at West Potomac Park, Washington DC

©Katley Demetria Brown 2013

Happy New Year 2014! And thank you for stopping by.

This is the first post of Light and Shadow, a blog dedicated to poetry, photography, and a little bit of this and that. I will also be offering chapbooks for sale at a future date on this site. By writing, I hope to raise some money for a future trip to Bulgaria.

Light and Shadow will be different from my other blog, The Alien Diaries.  It will complement the Alien Diaries, and refer to it periodically. If you like music from the Balkans, or music and dance in general, it's well worth a look.

Each month there will be a different theme with a poem, a photo, or both. 

Today's theme is Why I Hate Winter. It's February, and it's bitterly cold.  There is about a foot of snow on the ground right now, and more to come this weekend.  The entire blade of this shovel is covered in snow.

That's nothing compared to the February snowstorm of 2013, which was a real blockbuster.  It lasted for two days, left 24" of snow on the ground, and we couldn't go anywhere by car until the snowplow reached our street.  My husband was up early the day it ended and he managed to shovel the walk. A helpful neighbor came by his snowblower and blew out some of the driveway.

The street wasn't plowed until later that afternoon. This YouTube video shows the tractor with the plow attachment assigned to clear our street. A truck with four wheel drive would have been a better choice.  The motor on this vehicle sounds very sick.

There was once a time when I enjoyed winter.  I was young, didn't have to worry about shoveling snow, and even worse, driving in it.  Snow was magic. Packed down, it made for excellent sled runs on the hills of Soundview Houses in the Bronx, where I grew up.

I used to ski on it, sled on it, and play in it.  Not anymore.

That all changed when I moved to Massachusetts, which is colder and snowier than the Bronx, and I had to drive everywhere, even when it snowed. Although schools take snow days, those of us who work for a living have to go to work unless the snow makes it totally impossible.

I got older and my cold tolerance plummeted.

Heating oil is expensive, so I keep my house cold.  Once in a while I turn on the heat and huddle by the radiator and share my thoughts on one of my blogs.

The thing I hate most is shoveling snow.  It involves being out in the cold and wind; gloves and boots get wet, and it's very physically demanding work.  It can also be fatal to those with a heart condition, fortunately I am in good enough shape for hard labor.

And finally, here's a haiku I wrote about shoveling the driveway.  It is the first in the series of haikus about winter.

Winter Haiku #1

Time to shovel it
Wet, cold, heavy and white
The driveway awaits.

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