Reflections on the cold, white stuff

Yeaaaa! It's snowing in New York City. It's the weather person's dream come true because they've been warning us for nigh on a month or so about the enormous snow storm headed our way. Temporarily forgetting the fact that in the nineteen years I have lived here the weather people have rarely predicted anything mildly accurate (I'm thinking of that school Snow Day a few years back that turned out to be an incredibly dry, sunny, 60 degree vacation for the kids) I ran out and stocked up on candles, dry milk, flashlights, and canned goods. Filled the spare room with bottled water, batteries, and matches as though it were Y2K all over again and hunkered down, and waited, and waited, and here it is -- at least an inch -- two perhaps! And it's still coming down, more like frigid rain than snow, but there's white stuff on the ground, and the Super across the street was scraping it at 5am this morning, so I can't help figuring, this is IT! Got the snow shoes out, cleaned off the skis and just checking to see if the ski pants will ease over my jeans. Then I'm outta' here, to brave it to the corner deli and see if they still have supplies. And then, wait for it, then I'm going to update my status on Freakbook, in case no one else has noticed it's snowing. As I write this, tires are swishing outside and the conscientious, neighboring Super just can't keep his paws off his mechanical snow blower -- he'll often do a midnight number if he sees so much as a piece of dander fall from a passing bird --and I know why. The "City," as in, the municipal arm of this fair capital, doles out instant fines to landlords who have not cleared the sidewalk in front of their buildings, which causes mania every time the accumulation is more than one flake. And what I have come to realize is that this concern from the powers-that-be is not about care at all, as I once suspected. It is about litigation and more importantly, revenue. As with the parking tickets, it's a quick way to raise cash. If it were truly about improving the quality of life here and making sure that the sidewalks and street corners were passable for the elderly and those with strollers or even clumsy clods, like me, then the salt would be out (which it wasn't) and my daughter would not have pratfalled directly into a three foot mound of cold, powdery snow as she emerged from the bus. I'd like to see a wheelchair mount that lot. As for the steps down into the subway -- a treacherous, icy entrance to hell -- take your choice and hold the handrail for dear life, or shoot down faster than a scud missile. Just the other day I was witness to an elderly man who had lost his footing and became downwardly airborne. But there you have it. The world's greatest capital dealing with inclement weather. Your triple tax dollars hard at work making this place a nicer, gentler environment to live in!