(no subject)

[shadowkat]

So I wrote this on Facebook:

As I watch the blizzard raging out my windows...so thick you can't see past the grill ironwork of the fire escape...I think, no more, no more. The first snow in a city is white and pristine, quiet, and soft as a down blanket. But then, alas, as time wears on, it gets pockmarked by the city. Stained by dog pee (at least I think it is dog pee), windshield wiper fluid (it's blue, so that's a guess), dirt, trash, weird red and pink dies...in short the city has a bit of fun with it. And if it is cold, it freezes and becomes hard as a rock. Then more snow comes...and more. Until we have various layers. All stacked up in piles, sometimes waist high, standing like barriers between the road and the sidewalk. Winter, I've decided, is better suited to rural areas...where things stay pretty.

My aunts took exception. Notably they are my father's sisters...

Apparently rural snow gets very yellow in the winter. Although I remember it being rather white in rural PA and suburban Kansas...but that's just me.

Comments

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Back in the days when coal burning home furnaces were common, snow would get dirty gray where I lived, even in the woods. The good part was that coal cinders were much more affective than salt in getting snow and ice off the roads as long as the sun was out. The road edges would get grubby and disgustingly dirty till the snow mounds made by the plows melted away.

Most people got rid of the dirty coal furnaces in their homes by the mid 1960s. After that the snow stayed much whiter.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I spoke with my mother on the phone just now - and she said that my aunts are just thinking about their dogs. Snow = how their dogs handle it.

See...this is why I prefer cats. Much cleaner regarding these things.