Philadelphia, along with a large part of the rest of this country, had a bit of snow on Sunday. It was the most snow we’ve had since I’ve moved into this house nearly six years ago.
I was out at 5:00 AM on Sunday morning and pretty much every hour and a half after that to try to keep my sidewalk cleared, and there was about another inch or two of snow accumulated each time I stepped out. Happily it was fine powdery snow, so it was relatively easy to sweep and shovel.
Eventually though I complained to my neighbor that there was no place to put the damn white stuff any more.
By the time it got dark, the snow seemed to have stopped and my sidewalk was sorta clear, at least there was a path that folks could walk through.
But when I woke up the following morning I discovered that not only had at least another inch or two fallen, but apparently nature had one final nasty trick to play. The temperature must have risen briefly just to the melting point of water (you know, that’s the same temperature as the freezing point) and the snow turned to rain, because there was a lovely patina of frozen water covering the final batch of snow, making it a bitch to clear away. Nevertheless, someone (perhaps my neighbor’s “gentleman friend”—well, that’s what she calls him) had made a valiant attempt to clear away a path through about half of my sidewalk.
But my front stoop still had that slick covering of frozen H2O. My broom, which I had been using the day before to clear away the snow on the stoop’s steps, was clearly of no use. I needed to soften up the slick surface to make it manageable, so I got my bucket of Kind Melt (that’s supposed to be kind to pets as it melts the frozen stuff), but instead of sprinkling it on the steps before, you know, stepping on them, I, uh, stupidly thought I could get a better angle from the ground and so I stepped onto that slick surface and oophf!
I fell!
Hard!
I think the only things that prevented a serious injury were that my back landed on the steps themselves, so I didn’t fall that far, and my layers of outer clothing that insulated me from the cold also had the benefit of protecting my back somewhat.
I hope I don’t make that stupid mistake again.
In any case I did get the steps cleared off, but the rest of the sidewalk had to wait until later.
Later on I managed to clear a path, and that’s the best that anyone could do.
In the afternoon I ventured out and took a short walk around the block.
Not only hasn’t our little side street been plowed (no surprise there), but there are quite a few houses where there has been no attempt to clean the sidewalk.
The forecast is for the temperature to remain well below the freezing point of water for at least a week so the snow and frozen water won’t be melting anytime soon.
Meanwhile, I haven’t forgotten what’s going on in Minneapolis.
For example:
He Spent Decades Building the Religious Right. Now He’s Marching to Undo It.
“Being here, in solidarity, is part of the repair work in my own soul,” said Rev. Rob Schenck, an Evangelical minister who spent decades commingling church and state to advance conservative causes like the anti-abortion movement. One example: Schenck’s organization, Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, created “Operation Higher Court,” which trained wealthy couples as “stealth missionaries” to befriend Supreme Court justices to preserve, in his words, a Christian nation.
Now, he says he must confront the damage he helped cause, including what he believes was his role in delivering “the entities that are now inflicting all of this suffering on so many people”—extending to the rise of President Donald Trump. “We made this terrible deal with Donald Trump because we were already demoralized,” he told Mother Jones in 2018. “He didn’t demoralize us—he is the evidence of our demoralization.”
So, here, braving subzero temperatures, Schenck told me, “I have to do the work of repair.” The video above was taken on Friday, during the city’s “Day of Truth and Freedom”—a citywide strike and march in which clergy played a prominent role. “These folks are showing more grace in accepting me than I would have ever extended to them,” he said, flanked by organizers shouting, “Whose streets? Our streets!”
Those folks are showing far more grace in accepting Schenck than I would. It seems to me that it’s kinda late to have a come-to-Jesus moment, so to speak.
Let me end this on a somewhat upbeat note:
New Yorkers were impressed at how well Mamdani handled the snowstorm!
Given all the talk about how inexperienced Mamdani was, even I pointed that out while I supported his candidacy, it’s good to see how he is handling his first crisis. Apparently better than his predecessors.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani managed to successfully weather the storm – at least so far.
From the early hours of Sunday morning to well into the evening, Mamdani traversed the city, shoveling snow, greeting and thanking sanitation workers, posing for photo ops, providing updates via television interviews and hosting a news conference. Tackling this weekend’s storm, which dumped a foot of snow on the city, was the first big challenge of the new mayor’s tenure. And while managing the piles of snow and bitter cold will continue to be a challenge in the days ahead, Mamdani seems to have emerged from this first governing crucible without making any major mistakes. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards lauded the effort as an A to Gothamist. “Mamdani Clears Early Hurdles as Storm Bears Down on New York,” wrote The New York Times’ headline. Even some of Mamdani’s skeptics offered tentative praise.
“I really can’t complain,” Diane Savino, a former state senator and senior adviser to former Mayor Eric Adams, told City & State. “I saw him ever present. They used to make fun of Eric for doing that too, but the truth is that’s what the mayor’s job is. Get your appropriate windbreaker on and be out there. You are the commander in chief and I think from that perspective, he clearly passed his first big test.”
