-
Pray and Grow Rich
May 16, 2013 | 64 comments
-
Ruthie’s Way
May 2, 2013 | 6 comments
-
A Free and Indivisible Union
April 25, 2013 | 70 comments
-
Revoke Obama’s Peace Prize
April 18, 2013 | 80 comments
-
What the New Atheists Ignore
April 11, 2013 | 103 comments
The Nation's Pulse
Winterlong
Enjoying winter — with a few qualifications.
Long before you begin to lose friends to the Grim Reaper, you lose them to the sunbelt.
Over the holidays old friends stopped by, bragging how in a week’s time they’d be back in sunny Austin or mild San Francisco running around in their stocking feet. “Who needs four seasons?” they said. “One is plenty.” My friend Karen told how she had to leave the Midwest, otherwise she might have stuck her head in the oven, and she didn’t mean to check the roast. She simply couldn’t take one more bleak, dreary Midwestern winter.
Winter can be a trial, no doubt about it. Especially this winter, which is shaping up to be the coldest since the Pleistocene epoch, and has even the most fervent environmentalist idling his Subaru in the driveway in the hope of hastening global warming. But winter also has its advantages, especially if you live in the city. The street out front of my girlfriend’s house — which all summer long resembles nothing less than Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro — is wonderfully quiet now. We can walk up and down the strip in the evening without fear of being molested, since it is too cold even for the hardiest crack addicts and muggers. Wasn’t it Shakespeare who said: “Winter tames man, woman and beast”? Anyway, it shuts them up for a few months. So we bundle up and stroll serenely down the sidewalks for a seasonal brew at one of the corner taverns.
On most days, my girlfriend is up before the sun baking like a madwoman, and winter is definitely the season for baking. Nothing beats apple strudel hot out of the oven on a frigid winter’s morning. Fortified with a belly full of warm strudel we are able to make that long trudge (“every mile is two in winter”) out to the driveway to jackhammer the ice and snow off our windshields. And when else can you lie around in bed on a Saturday afternoon and catch up on your reading and not feel guilty because you are not outside mowing the lawn or blowing leaves around your yard or whatever folks with vast suburban lawns do the rest of the year?
WINTER IS AN excellent time to get away. Best are the quick little weekend getaways to some riverside bed and breakfast. For longer trips, nothing compares to the seaside in winter, one of the perennial themes of Victorian essayists and other misanthropes. “[I]n the month of August [I could not have] relished so heartily as now the simple pleasures which the seaside always can afford. Everything is delightful. I look forward to everything,” wrote Max Beerbohm many winters ago. Essayists seem to shun the seaside in season when it is noisy and crowded with drunken louts, or, if they are dragged there by their wives, they are not inspired enough to write about it. Dickens was the exception; he found the seaside in winter dull and unmoving: “Gloom reigns everywhere and the dullness is simply intolerable.”
I don’t know. At my age, I am kind of a fan of a contemplative dullness. Unfortunately, my girlfriend doesn’t allow too much tedium to creep into my bones. Her cure for cabin fever is to take me ice-skating and hiking and dancing. I’m not sure what contra dancing is, but we’re going this Sunday. I believe contra means “against,” so I assume there will be a hall full of people who oppose dancing, sort of like the Rev. Shaw Moore in the movie Footloose. Sounds like my kind of people.
Surviving winter isn’t the challenge it used to be. Today, most Americans have indoor plumbing, gas furnaces, and car heaters. (When the thermostat drops below ten degrees, I think about my Uncle Ray, then nine years old, who had to wake up before dawn in January and walk to school and shovel coal into the furnace so the classrooms would be toasty and warm by time the other kids arrived.) Even so, our winters are still too much for some. I suspect Florida and Texas and California are full of such transplanted softies looking for something else to complain about — like the presence of too many old people, too many rednecks, and too many traffic jams.
I suppose the best thing about winter, though, is that — here at least — it only lasts three months. Three months is nothing. I can do that with my eyes closed — in bed preferably, with lots of blankets. Three months is certainly no reason to up and move away from your friends and family. By April Fool’s Day the crocuses will begin poking their heads up, the days will lengthen, the coats and gloves will come off, the high school baseball team will begin practicing — out of doors, no less. Then the humidity will return and the streets will come alive, and we’ll be kept up all hours by the noise and the music, and, before you know it, we’ll be longing for the deep stillness of winter again.
About the Author
Christopher Orlet writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (103) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Christopher Orlet
More Articles From The Nation's Pulse
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/01/07/winterlong
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- The End of the Castros?
- A President Loses His Power
- The Vast and the Tiny
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Deborah D| 1.7.10 @ 7:27AM
Mr. Orlet, I remember winters in Illinois. I actually lived in the southern part of the state about an hour east of St. Louis.
Cold, cold in winter...hot, hot in summer. Beautiful autumns and springs. I do love the stay inside and baking part, as you describe. Or, the big pot of soup on the stove. I love the snow (as long as I don't have to drive far in it). There are times I miss Midwestern winters, but right now in NC (near the beach) it's 27 degrees and has been for nearly a week with no let up until next week. I've lived in the South for 20 years, and I don't remember a cold like this.
I love the picture of the couple walking in the snow. I miss that, but right now I'm waiting for sunshine and no wind.
Appleby| 1.7.10 @ 7:30AM
THREE MONTHS? What kind of a sissy baby neighbourhood do you live in, sir? We here in Eastern Canada have a holiday called Victoria Day, around the 24th of May, welcomed by the opening of racing at Mosport International Raceway. This race weekend has been handicapped by snow, ice and freezing rain in the past, and those of us who camp at this most beautiful of natural road courses (which has the coldest media tower in the world -- the joke is *Mosport Tower burns to the ground -- $200 damage!*), had we needed an alibi last year, could have accounted for every single second of both evenings in our tents which shook and rattled like tambourines.
I have several editorial cartoons from past years too, showing Canadians muffled to the eyebrows in winter gear, lying in sun chairs, wishing each other a Happy Victoria Day ... and last summer, in fact, the quintessential cartoon showing a man in an inflatable kiddie pool, with a blazing campfire nearby at which he is warming his hands.
Winter here in Kanukistan typically ends at the first of June, just about when Stanley Cup Finals are finally rolling down.
And like Queen Victoria, long before June 1, We Are Not Amused.
Ken (Old Texican)| 1.7.10 @ 9:00AM
Hey guys, I sit here in my study in Houston, watching it sleet. Supposed to be 21 degrees tommorow night.
Lookie here, when I want to play in the snow, I jump in the plane. heh.
We play golf in light sweaters in most Januaries...brrrrr not this year thankyoumrgore heh.
Wotan| 1.7.10 @ 9:11AM
Mr. Orlet,
Given this comment:
"We can walk up and down the strip in the evening without fear of being molested, since it is too cold even for the hardiest crack addicts and muggers."
I suggest your old friends left for reasons more than the weather.
Le Cracquere| 1.7.10 @ 9:40AM
Orlet's fine article fills me with yearning for genuine winter. Spending one's entire life in the deepest South doesn't only leaves one underacquainted with cold--nine-month summers of Tartarean heat front-loads a man with enough Kelvins to last a lifetime. In short, I bask in enjoyment of Orlet's excellent writing, slightly dread the boiling heat that March will bring, and meditate wistfully on written descriptions of snow.
Carpenter| 1.7.10 @ 9:54AM
After years spent in the gloomy mist of British winters, and a 4-year taste of midwestern snow, I'll happily settle for the few cool months we have here in SE Texas. A few hours away in the Piper and the ice and snow of Oklahoma and Kansas is adventure enough.
Dave Burgess| 1.7.10 @ 9:54AM
There is nothing like walking into the dusk at the end of your workday and feeling that fresh cold on your face. You can have the sunbelt.
grumpy| 1.7.10 @ 10:02AM
Who cares about your girlfriend?
Roscoe| 1.7.10 @ 10:47AM
Dickens should have taken a hike on a blisteringly cold August day, along the coastline where now is located Australia's Great Ocean Road. He should have done this while a wild winter storm out of the Southern Ocean was sending massive rollers from the Antarctic, across the vast ocean, to the Bass Strait. He could have watched - standing in the howling gale and freezing foam spray - as the waves spent their last energy pounding away at the unmoving mass of Australia. I'd warrant he'd not have found that sight intolerably dull.
R Martin| 1.7.10 @ 12:30PM
Well written. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie.
Sheryl| 1.7.10 @ 10:56AM
I have always enjoyed winter for many of the same reasons described so poetically here. As I get older, however, the joys of the season are greatly diminished with the prospect of slipping and sliding all over the roads in the ice and snow. I live in Pittsburgh, which usually has relatively mild winters, but our uniquely hilly terrain and being surrounded by rivers, makes driving in winter a real challenge, which has become increasingly more intolerable. I am only now, in my 57th year, beginning to understand people who flock to warmer climes. Self-preservation, I think. Still kind of sad, though.
One more observation--marry the woman, already!
Appleby| 1.7.10 @ 4:03PM
I moved to Atlanta from Buffalo NY swearing I would never face winter again. 17 years later I moved back North, having decided that four seasons beat two (wet and dry) and that it is easy to put on more clothes but there is a limit as to how many layers you can take off. (Cue that old Vaudeville song "It Ain't No Sin to Take off your Skin and Dance Around In Your Bones.")
explosion proof floodlight | 11.25.10 @ 1:25AM
If freedom has a natural home in the modern world, therefore, it is the nation-state: the legal entity that claims sovereignty within a bounded territory, and which can grant freedom within that territory through its law.
Pingback| 1.7.10 @ 11:47AM
Letdown « In the Heart of the Heart of the Country links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Dean| 1.7.10 @ 12:28PM
In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, summer is defined as the two months of the year when the ice fishing is lousy.
Sheila| 1.7.10 @ 12:59PM
Lovely paean to winter, Mr. Orlet. While I miss nothing else about my New England college years, I miss seeing buds sprouting on snow-laden branches. While I wouldn't pay homage to northern England's gray skies and mists, I miss the glory of that rare sunny day. While I never gloried in Moscow's muddy spring, I miss those crystalline nights. While I love many things about Texas (excepting all the New York, New Jersey, Chicago, and California transplants), the climate is NOT one of them. Nine months of summer, two of spring, and two weeks each of fall and winter just isn't my idea of a perfect climate. Sorry, Old Texican!
Northern Rebel| 1.7.10 @ 1:31PM
I've told my wife that I intend to die a Texan, and she loves me so much, she will follow me anywhere. It will be good for her. Because of various injuries, and health concerns, warm weather will be her friend.
In the meantime we exist in Northern NY, where 80 inches of snow can fall in a 24 hour period.
I love watching the snow fall. and I enjoy civilization stopping blizzard, as much as the next guy.
So I will have my cabin in the Adirondacks, but I will be a Texan very soon, in case we have to divorce ourselves from fascist American politicians.
I hope I will be welcome, and I promise to contribute positively to Texas society.
Please put in a good word for me Ken, I promise not to let you down. My nephew James has been a good Texan for almost ten years, and he will vouch for my charactor, and patriotism.
See you soon, I hope!
Northern Rebel
Alaskan for Global Warming| 1.7.10 @ 4:01PM
I wouldn't mind a little 'global warming". It's 9° in Fairbanks and we're riding a heat wave! Last week it was -35° at my house. I have two huskies that could care less how cold it is. In the summer we go for 4-5 mile walks after work. In the winter they are lucky if I get them down the block and back. I miss summer, meandering down the snow machine trails in the midnight sun. I lived in Dallas for 20 years before moving to Fairbanks – sorry – but y’all get NO sympathy from the far noth.
Margie| 1.7.10 @ 4:29PM
When it starts getting below 70 or so I say it's getting there. Close to winter, that is. That starts happening somewhere around Oct or so.. then I have to wait all the way till about next June for it to warm up again. August has always been my favorite month of the year because that's when the wonderful Sun has done its wonderful job of warming everything up to its peak. I just love Global Warming! Me bones are longing for the Land of Summertime somewhere else!
Keith I| 1.7.10 @ 7:15PM
Another poignant piece from Mr. Orlet. Hear in God's half of the Peoples Republic of Maryland (the "Eastern Shore") we usually have dreary, rainy winters. This year the crisp cold is very refreshing. My evening ritual is to take the hound on a thirty or forty minute walk after the wife and child head to bed. The cold night air only hurts for a little while but then opens your lungs. The hound races from frozen puddle to frozen puddle in the cut soy been fields. The brilliant night sky has a clarity that is absent in the summer haze. No better way to experience the wonder of God's creation. I highly recommend it.
northern Rebel| 1.7.10 @ 9:09PM
Thanks for buckin' me up Alaskan!
Our record for me anyway, is a mere -24f, but they'll get no pity from me either!
Pingback| 1.7.10 @ 11:06PM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Winterlong [spectator.org] on Topsy. links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
cali bar store | 1.8.10 @ 5:38AM
cali bar store
cali bar supplies
jaya | 1.11.10 @ 1:02AM
Lookie here, when I want to play in the snow, I jump in the pnike outletlane. heh.
We play golf in light sweaters in most Januaries...brrrradidas outletr not this year thankyoumrgore heh.
Varyusha | 1.29.10 @ 9:45AM
I hate winter because I can not stand the cold, would be required to be far away somewhere where warm all year round, at least for the winter
Lilyusha | 3.2.10 @ 5:47AM
Good article!
ms office 2007 | 3.21.10 @ 12:18AM
Office 2007 Professional
Office 2007 Ultimate
www.us-bapeoutlet.com | 4.2.10 @ 7:22AM
www.us-bapeoutlet.com
ruth| 4.27.10 @ 3:25AM
come to have a look
iPad to iTunes Transfer is the best choice for
iPad fans to transfer iPad Music/Video/Photos/TV Shows/Podcasts etc to iTunes, With it, you can
not only copy files from iPad directly to iTunes, but also can backup iPad content to your
iTunes or PC local discs. Besides, it also has the function of transferring
hublot | 4.28.10 @ 10:30PM
between the Paris green desire drop's cercis chinensis leaf is in full bloom the Chinese redbud, likely hangs on tree's agate is ordinary. The Chinese redbud does not look like the peony to be such tender and beautiful, also does
watches | 4.28.10 @ 10:31PM
like the peony to be such tender and beautiful, also does not look like the camellia to be such fiery red, does not look like the narcissus flower to be such
wafefaca| 4.28.10 @ 10:36PM
reportedly Swiss made replicas are taken to be the best.For the Swiss replicas are considered the best goods, you will find nearly all sellers of hublot
tssefa| 4.28.10 @ 10:39PM
They cost several thousands of dollars less than the originals and can be made to last quite a long time with a little care.You would hublot
submersible watches | 4.29.10 @ 5:31AM
http://www.watchbeef.com/vacheron-watches.html panerai replica http://www.watchbeef.com/alain.....tches.html carrera reviews The American Spectator Winterlong
event management marketing | 5.10.10 @ 5:57AM
writing an interesting and very useful,
informative
出会い | 7.21.11 @ 3:52AM
itumomiteimasu
Converse | 8.11.11 @ 9:34PM
is good