Recently I was visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. 'Nothing in particular,' she replied. I might have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.

How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. In spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter's sleep. I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me.

-Helen Keller, Three Days to See (1933)
NB: Helen Keller was deaf-blind.

Friday, January 18, 2008

The Great White South

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Yesterday, did it ever snow! (Well, it was actually a big mix of snow, slush and rain, but good enough to be called snow here.) I noticed that in the Great White South, they do things a little differently than in the Great White North.

-First, before the snow showed any signs of turning to rain, several people were using umbrellas, presumably to keep their hairdos all perfect. Others were sporting ever-so-cool flip-flops.

-The university's response was quite amusing: loads of salt were sprinkled on top of the melting slush (which was all gone by morning), and instead of mini-tractor-snowplough things to clear the sidewalks, they hald mini sweeping-mashines that are used in the Great White North to clear the sand in the spring.

Oh those crazy Great White Southerners!

Gepostet von Nicholas Dubé unter Friday, January 18, 2008

1 comment:

R said...

Having lived in a Pennsylvanian town where we could hardly handle 6 inches of snow...I still find DC's reaction to any degree of snowfall rather amusing...

In Phoenix we mostly just deal with dust storms.

January 19, 2008 at 1:41 p.m.

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