Winter is icummen in,Ezra Pound's "Ancient Music" is a parody of the anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem "Sumer is icumen in," and I apologize if the refrain offends anyone, but it pretty much fits how I'm feeling about the weather system that's supposed to hit us tonight and to lag through the weekend.
Lhude sing Goddamm.
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Actually, I like snow (which is kind of odd for a Louisiana boy), but it seems to want to hit when I have too many things going on. I don't need the traffic troubles it is likely to bring tomorrow (or if I end up coming in to work on Saturday). Plus, the city still hasn't picked up leaves on my street. Even though the yard has been raked pretty clean, there are several big piles of leaves sitting beside the sidewalk and the street and now they're going to just sit under the snow/ice and mulch ... kind of like what happened last year.
Driving in to work this morning, the other winter thing that struck me is that DC has a fair number of memorials that include some sort of water element. But during winter, the water bits are shut off to avoid freezing problems/damage. Driving past the National Japanese American Memorial, I was thinking how the shallow pool part of the memorial looks a bit bare/ugly when empty. When filled with water, it creates a nice reflective surface that works really well with the large rocks in the pool and the rest of the setting, but empty it's no where near as evocative. The same is true of the Capitol Reflecting Pool in front of the Grant Memorial and several other reflecting pools/fountains throughout the city. I think the water elements in the FDR Memorial stay active all winter (and if they don't, well the memorial loses something -- the way water is used to represent times of trouble, war, and reflection is really effective).
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