Snow

There are many reasons why I love that cold, white stuff that falls from the sky, but here are the top 5 reasons:

Human Solidarity

Yes, there are a few old grumps out there who remain unchanged by the shimmering coat hugging the earth, but for the most part, snow brings people together in a positive way. Neighbors shovel each others driveways. Groups of strong men form out of nowhere to push stuck cars out of drifts. As Trish and I walked around with our sleds yesterday in search of a hill, strangers called out to us in friendly terms, wishing us luck in our quest. People never call out to us when we’re out for a walk on a snowless day, and if they did, we would probably feel slightly uncomfortable. When snow falls, it’s something we have in common with the people around us, and indifference toward our fellow man transforms into joviality.

Acceptability of Weird Actions

You can do totally strange things in public, and no one thinks less of you. In fact, when I was driving home from work yesterday, feeling a little nervous as my care slid this way and that even as my steering wheel remained stationary, I noticed kids of all ages actually bounding around through various yards, leaping up in the air and landing with a powdery smack on the ground. They ran and slid. They skipped. They screamed. On a normal day, I would have worried that there was something wrong with a bunch of children performing these activities, but in the snow, it seemed so wonderful, I couldn’t help but grin broadly, wishing I were out there with them. Later, when Trish and I where out walking, I got the urge to stop, fall on my back, and flail my arms and legs like an animal in a trap, creating a pretty fantastic snow angel if I do say so myself. I wonder what would happen if I randomly fell on my back and started flailing around on a non-snowy day…

Multiple Layers

How refreshing to see lumps of clothing ungracefully navigating around in the snow. People appear more cheery when well bundled, sporting colorful hats and scarves that catch and hold falling snow flakes. When they slip and fall on the slick snow, they do not cry out, but rather, they laugh out loud, having again become the awkward children they once were. Also, on cold snowy days, fat people have the advantage over skinny people, since they are naturally able to hold in their heat better. Skinny people have to put on more layers of clothing to create artificial “fat” to compensate for their inferior bodies, and often in this condition, an onlooker would be unable to tell a differences in peoples body types. Fat people are sort of like gods of winter; the envy of anorexic movie stars and the like.

Sledding

How much of an explanation do you really need? Half the fun is sliding out of control and flipping over at seemingly break neck speeds, the other half is observing how goofy it looks when others perform the same feats. You get to bundle up and wear multiple layers of everything, spend hours sliding down and trudging up giant hills, then when you’re completely exhausted, you sit around sipping hot cocoa while your clothes tumble around in the dryer. Yes, the only thing better than sledding is sledding at night.

Mutt Reactions

Of course there are exceptions, but most dogs I know love snow. When we were kids, our dog Lucky would pull us down the sledding hill to give us more speed. She would become hysterical with joy at the sight of snow, and even when she started to get old and less enthusiastic about most things, she never lost her vigor in the snow. Our current dog Scrappy bounds around like a gazelle in the snow, and she is constantly eating and snorting it as she goes. I think she might actually get sort of high off it through the snorting process. Nothing is funnier to watch than a dog enjoying a snow storm.

Everything Is Compensation

I was reading a book the other night called The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, and came across an interesting idea. The line was, “In the world, everything is compensation. When you can’t go as fast, you push harder.” It was a concept I’ve never looked directly in the eye before, and it quite intrigued me, I suppose because it’s true of most everything.

The entire universe is constantly struggling to obtain equilibrium. Bodies of water decrease; rain falls to fill them full. People die; babies are born. The sun rises and heats up the earth; it sets to cool things off. Nature is a thing of perpetual motion, trying to keep its scales balanced.

The human race has its own set of wheels, constantly turning to make sure all aspects of life roll smoothly and equally. Businesses change course to compensate for change in consumer attitudes. Institutes for higher education offer degree programs based on societies need for specific professionals. Leaders are appointed to take charge when groups of men require guidance. Life as we know it is one big push towards the middle.

Because all nature fights for equilibrium, it should come as no surprise that the tendencies of the individual man also struggle for balance. When one member of our race deviates too far from our established norm, we lock them up or attempt to correct their abnormality. To think differently is a curse. To act differently is a disgrace. Systems of education fight to create people who think and act as governments see fit, all under the pretense of forming “free thinkers”.

While pondering on this concept, I was reminded of a speech I read way back when by James Baldwin called “A Talk To Teachers.” Baldwin says, “The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society.”

Baldwin goes on to say that in order for a society to survive, it has to change and evolve, and the only means of doing this is for “responsible” citizens to “examine society and try to change it and fight it.” Ironically, in this scenario the outliers become a means of balance, as working towards change is what causes a society to remain standing.

We like to think that in order for individuals to succeed, others must fail, but a more accurate account would be to acknowledge that for some to fail, they must be manipulated into not succeeding. And that’s compensation at work. Minds are designed to expand ideas, therefore making new ideas, never thought before. Each person has the ability to be unique, and in this way is uniform. Innovative ideas are not a miracle. The miracle is that minds can be manipulated into not having innovative ideas. Success is what comes naturally, and yet we are taught from a very young age that to be “civilized” means we must conform to the traditions of mediocrity formed by less developed ancestors. More often than not ideas are harnessed through formal education, not expanded.

And so, as “responsible” citizens, we must constantly fight to change and expand the way we are told to view the world. And what is more, we must not keep these ideas to ourselves, but rather, we must share what we know and how we know it so that others can pick up the thread of ever expanding thoughts. If it’s a better world we want for ourselves and our children, we cannot be content to simply accept the notions of our governments, our religious authorities, and all other men who give us stale answers to stale questions. We must ask new questions.

The only way I know to do this is through writing. In writing, not only can we make ourselves heard, but we can begin to understand the unique ideas within ourselves. And in writing what we know, we give opportunity to others to expand upon that knowledge, carrying it further than we ever could have done ourselves. Ideas begin with the individual, but they are a group effort.

Joan Didion, an American journalist and author, summed up all my thoughts on writing in two sentences: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Life is filled with questions that do not exist until we take the time to form and ask them.

“In the world, everything is compensation.” It’s time to stop being content with stale notions and ideas. Write what you know, and you might be surprised to find that you know more than you thought you did.

Tis the Season

“Tis the season”, but what “the season” actually is varies amongst individuals. December is definitely a month in which you reap exactly what you sow. For example, if

you’re a Grinch and decide you hate Christmas and all that goes with it, then you are most certainly in

for a very long, arduous month. On the other hand, if you throw yourself into the holiday festivities with cheer and gusto, there’s no end to the joy you’ll take away from it all.

Personally, the month leading up to Christmas has always been my favorite time of the year. When I was a kid, there was no end to the holiday traditions we concocted, and even now, some of those traditions remain in tact. Mom stills buys a new puzzle or Lego set for us to work on (adults that we now are) on Christmas Eve, while watching Christmas movies and drinking homemade hot cocoa. Dad and I still make vast amounts of Spritz cookies at the beginning of December, just the two of us, filling buckets full of the tiny, Crisco-y delights, which always last until New Years. Icicle boy twinkle lights still hang on the mantel amid our stockings, the only change being that now the quantity of stockings which hang there has joyously grown as we’ve added new members to our family.

Next weekend, Old Fashioned Christmas in Wilmore will take place, which has always been my favorite Wilmore festival. All of the little shops on Main Street hold open houses, encouraging people to come in out of the cold, receive refreshments, listen to live Christmas music, and then venture back out onto the street to repeat the process all over again. Hundreds of Wilmorons walk up and down Main Street, sharing Christmas together as they reunite after not having seen each other in some cases since the festival the previous year.

When I was in Middle school, I can remember my friend Mary and I having sleepovers on the evening of December 22^nd, carrying over into December 23^rd, which we cleverly referred to as “Christmas Adam”, it being the day before Christmas Eve. We would watch as many Christmas movies as our brains could process, working on craft projects as we watched.

Back in the days before my brothers and I got too wise for our own good, we had many questions about Santa Claus. We each had our own personal elf we would write letters to in a spiral notebook, leaving it out on the kitchen table when we went to bed. When we woke up the next morning, our letters would have been answered by our elf friends (mine’s name was Elizabeth), and sometimes a treat or two would be left as well. Once I remember Elizabeth’s handwriting looking particularly like Dad’s, and when I confronted him on this matter, he admitted to being the letter writer that one time, because when he’d woken up and seen Elizabeth had not been to the house to leave a response to my letter, he had not wanted me to feel upset, so he’d intervened.

There was a magic elf that Mom made back before memory, that had green yarn hair, a red elf suit with bells on the toes and a little black belt around his middle, and eyes that remained closed, in a happy, sleepy state. Every year when we’d put up our Christmas tree and unpack our decorations, we’d take the magic elf out of his red flannel sack, and each member of our family sprinkled him with the magic glitter dust kept in a vile inside the bag. After everyone had sprinkled him (including our dog, Lucky), we’d place him under the Christmas tree, and the next morning when we awoke, he would have hidden himself someplace in the living room. Every morning we found him in a new place, and after he had been discovered by all, we’d place him carefully back under the tree, so that he could hide again the next night. This was a daily ritual up until Christmas Eve, when Santa would take him back to the North Pole, and we wouldn’t see him again until the next year.

Back in the days when Dad was the pastor of different Churches, December was a month of wrapping gifts to take with us the nursing home, where we’d sing carols to the inhabitants. One year a lady told Mom that she had the most beautiful singing voice she’d ever heard, and I think that’s when Mom developed a soft spot for crazy, old people. We’d carol door to door in various neighborhoods as well, and I can’t remember ever having had more fun than I did on those cold nights of spontaneous singing.

I have a thousand such memories that I’m sure will never fade, and I suppose they are what make the entire Christmas season such a joy for me. I am looking forward to all of the parties and celebrations that will take place throughout the coming month, and I hope that you are too.

Ape Day

You may find this hard to believe, but the annual Ape Day celebration that my older brothers developed 12 years ago is one of my favorite, most anticipated holidays of the year.

It began as a bit of silliness when Cris and Dusty were attending Asbury College at the same time. They hung around with the same group of friends, and for some reason, they thought it would be a laugh to dedicate an entire Saturday to watching all 5 of the Planet of the Apes movies. Little did they know then that their goofy idea would become the basis for an ongoing, beloved tradition.

Always held the Saturday before Thanksgiving, Ape Day became a major event for the Asbury crowd, each year requiring a bigger venue to accommodate the loyal participants. Of course, after the first few years, Cris and Dusty had finished their time at Asbury College, but the tradition lived on.

Old friends who had helped found this celebration of bad Sci-Fi movies would sometimes travel quite a ways to attend. In some cases, founders that had settled in areas too distant to make the trip hosted their own Ape Day, making it a nationwide holiday.

Each year, new traditions and rituals are added to our bizarre day of fun, including, but not limited to:

- Incredibly violent monkey fights between Scotty and Dusty, in which they put on ape masks, find some grass, and pound each other until one of them can’t take it anymore.

- The Passing of the Sacred Ape ritual, which takes place after every movie, and involves everyone in the room congregating in a circle, clapping and doing their best ape impressions as we pass around an ape statue, wearing a Packer’s uniform, that Dusty painted back in high school. The full extent of this rather terrifying ceremony has developed over time, but if I’m not mistaken, The Sacred Ape was present even at the very first Ape Day.

- T-Shirt making. We don’t do it every year, but at this point, I think I’ve acquired at least 4, each unique and awesome.

- When the remake Planet of the Apes movie came out in 2001, we of

course incorporated that into the festivities. If you’re going to do something, do it right. The first few years we held an Ape Day Eve to watch the new movie, but now it has become a part of Ape day, extending our celebration, which now lasts from 10am until around 9 or 10pm.

Only themed snacks are allowed, and you wouldn’t believe how creative we get with this. I for one am responsible for making ape faced cookies, which you can see depicted here. Jen and Sharon have been known to bake different kinds of cakes, either shaped like ape heads, or bearing a creative, series related name, such as “Damned Dirty Cake.” Without fail, Dusty and Sharon always

provide the “Monkey Poo”, which is a giant bowl of crumbled and mashed brownies with the added class of walnuts. Most years Jen makes hot apple cider, and we call it “Monkey Blood.” Every so often, someone will bring monkey bread and bananas. Usually we have a two liter of grape soda around that no one ever drinks, but it sits as a trophy, the letters “GR” scratched out with a Sharpie.

This year, Molly brought a crock of delicious pulled pork, and we had no choice but to call it “Simmering Simian.” One year, Cris made a bunch of beer ahead of time, then spent who knows how long developing labels for his “Ape Beer”, which depicted scenes from the movies. Scotty is famous for his diligent yearly modifications to boxes of Charleston Chews, placing cut-to-size post it notes over the letters “ES” to make them Charlton Chews (and if I remember correctly, he sometimes changes them to “Cheston Chews”) to honor the beloved hero in the series, Charlton Heston. He also revises the word “Vanilla” to “Gorilla” so that the flavor matches the day. Genius.

If you’re not weirded out right now, you probably should be. This is by far the strangest celebration I have ever come across, and I love it dearly. It’s a day of consistency and fellowship. So many things in my life have changed as I’ve grown from a child into an adult, and I don’t mean for better or worse, just different. But Ape Day is for the most part unchanging, and I can count on its silliness to give me a boost as I share these traditions with my family and friends, who fortunately are as goofy as I.

The Crunching Of Leaves

Every Kentucky autumn seems like a miracle to me. Sometimes I get in my car and just drive, no destination in mind, only a longing to see the bright orange, red, yellow, purple, green, and brown leaves hanging from small and massive trees alike. Some people place trees into a single category, but the truth is, trees have as many personality types as people. Some drop a leaf at a time, knowing the time is coming when they can no longer keep what they’ve made and beginning the transition of loss, yet reluctant to give up their entire livelihood until it becomes absolutely necessary. Others jealously guard what belongs to them, keeping each leaf in check until all in one moment, the weight of responsibility becomes too great, and every leaf is abandoned into the breeze.

A friend of mine accuses me of extreme morbidity, because the truth is, I enjoy the dead leaves on the ground just as much as I love them alive in the trees. Making a point to step directly on as many as I can throughout the course of a walk, I am filled with pure joy at the crunching sound released from beneath my feet. There is nothing so simple in life as the crunching of leaves.

Some of my favorite memories are bound up with crunching leaves:

Building fort outlines with friends as a child, the elaborateness of the structures causing my mind to reel even now. The kitchen was essential in order to shelter a teepee stick configuration holding a bucket of dirty water in which we mixed fallen walnuts to produce imaginary stew. Almost equally important was a living room to relax in when the days work had been completed, and though young, we new the importance of prioritizing a space in which a girl could see a man about a horse (theoretically, of course)……

Waiting for that one day of opportunity when my favorite Ginkgo tree on Lexington Avenue would share its spongy, bright yellow fan leaves, giving us an entire afternoon of childhood ecstasy as we wore ourselves out building up piles and jumping in, building up piles and jumping in……

Walking from the bus stop with Kelly sophomore year of high school, both of us stomping as hard as we could, and laughing hysterically……

Rolling my lawn mower over thick leaf accumulation and watching the machine spit out the puréed product in perfect uniformity……

Strolling through my college campus after a fascinating literary discussion, the smell of dried leaves in my nostrils, their resonating rustle in my ears as I contemplated life’s wonders, both big and small……

The anticipation of the Evely family Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving, played amongst the fallen leaves with a belly full of culinary wonders……

These are the things that make Autumn mine, and now, I’m sharing them with you;)

Turn Up The Heat

When I opened my apartment door this morning, my spirits dropped quite a few percentage points. Not only was it cold, as in, go-back-inside-and-get-a-warm-coat cold, it was also pouring. I sighed, ducked my head, and made a run for my car.

By the time I made it inside my office, I was slightly soggy, incredibly cold, and in a fairly bad mood. I turned the electric kettle on straight away, and tried to cheer myself by anticipating the hot tea that would soon be in my hand.

I drank a cup. Then another, but I couldn’t seem to shake the cold from myself. Finally I realized that the building itself is what was making me cold, as we have not yet turned the heat on this season. It is only the beginning of October after all, and in my family, it’s practically a sin to turn the heat on at a premature date, such as October 14^th. In Kentucky, this is the time of year when you embrace the chill in the air with a sweatshirt, or if you’re bold enough, flannel. But sometimes you have to take a stand, family morals be damned.

So I skulked over to the thermostat on the wall and made the adjustment, instantly gratified by the sound of the unit kicking in. My shame was thick in the air around me, until the smell of memory reached my nose.

You know that smell associated with central heat that comes strongly the first use of the year, then faintly all through the winter? I associate this smell with warmth and comfort, because it welcomes me home when coming in from the bitter coldness of winter. However, that’s not the only meaning it holds for me.

Beginning when we moved to Kentucky when I was 6-years-old, I cannot remember a cold day in my childhood when my brothers and I did not fight over whose turn it was to sit on the heat duct in the living room of the house we grew up in. It was big enough for two if you were willing to squish together, always attempting to subtly ease the other person off to one side. Pulling your shirt wide over the vent made you look like a tent sporting a head.

Our backs and bottoms would roast, but getting up was an automatic forfeit of your spot, so we’d bear it as long as possible. Sometimes Mom would make us take a break when the room itself got too cold due to the deprivation caused by we the heat thieves, but usually we’d rotate turns throughout the school day, working math problems and compositions until we were red faced and hot to the touch.

One by one, my older brothers finished their time in home school, leaving fewer bodies in the rotation, until finally Scotty and I were the last two kids in the house. We didn’t have to fight for our spots anymore, but since there is no fun without competition, we’d struggle to keep the entire vent to ourselves.

I love these vent sitting memories, and when the strong smell of heat hit me this morning, the first of the year, they turned my sour morning into nostalgic comfort.

I think I’ll go make another cup of tea…

Ode To Fall

Sitting on my deck as the rain pours down around me, I am a part of everything. The lightning is mine, visible when I'm not looking. Thunder, a predictable comfort, persists in being heard, even by those without ears to listen.

I watch the new drops as they violently displace the old, forming bodies on the asphalt.

The air around becomes a cloud, the world a blur of colorless vitality.

Dampness fills my nostrils. Sweet, musty dew clings within until I can longer distinguish my body from my surroundings.

My bare toes lightly pummeled by rogue droplets become part of the inconsistent patter. Not a rhythm, but a melody, the notes floating here and there as the rain beats fast. Then slow. Fast. Then faster...

A spicy aroma mixes with the damp as the tea in my hand loses its heat. Quiet tones from my melancholy stereo merge with the full orchestra of the water falling from nowhere; a perfect harmony.

Looking up from the book in my lap with the dog eared pages and care worn cover, I close my eyes and breathe deeply, sighing over my encounter with perfection.

Fall is here.