Yet Another Day of Snow

Today's blizzard was just working up some energy when I got up at a little after 6:00. Then the winds came from the northeast plastering snow on my east-facing windows so I could hardly see out.  Some globs of frozen  snow/ice remain but mostly they're cleared up now.  The low sky has cleared and resumed it's loft dimensions above the trees and buildings that I normally look at as I sit as my computer here for a brief few minutes glowed with a buttery yellow from the setting sun.  The sky is the blue of a waning day, not a cloud in it.  This blizzard -- it really was a  blizzard which is largely identified as snow and wind-- is over.  Snow is piled around the building in soft, pristine drifts but the main expanse of lawn is only dusted.  My car is clear of snow and most of the parking lot is clear also.  There were areas of ice a couple of hours when I went out with some trash to put in the bin.  A good opportunity to fall and break a bone ... so I watched my step and stayed upright.

Is this the last storm of a long, difficult winter?  We all hope so.  Oh, how we hope so!  but I've seen snow storms in April, not only in upstate New York where they are not unusual but also in New York City where it is very unusual.  I would not like to see it here this winter. 

I have been haunted today by a scene from a movie I saw yesterday. Three Worlds, a 2012 French film about a hit and run accident. The story was so complex and deep it seems more a novel than a film. The scene I keep remembering was in the hospiital after the victim died. A panel of very distinguished looking doctors and nurses asked the wife to donate his body parts. The couple were illegal immigrants from Macadonia who had been working at menial jobs for five years. They had no medical insurance.  The wife asked how much they would pay for the organs. They explained in their highly moral way that the donation would save lives.  The wife burst out that she had been working at minimal wage, that in Macadonia body parts were paid for (probably on a black market), she knew the amounts.  You've given me nothing and you take everything from us, she said, and now you want this.  She would not do it.

Of course I feel organ donation is the right thing to do but the actress's portrayal is anger and despair was deeply touching especially in contrast to the attitudes of the panel.  Much else in the movie was also fine and very nuanced. The film did not have a real ending although it had a finish to the story of the man who hit the Macadonian. This sort of movie does not get made in the US. The opportunity to see things I would never see otherwise is part of what I like so much about being involved with the community college.