Finding Cybersnow

Weekend Assignment #178: It's hot. Everywhere. Really hot. Counteract it with a cool and refreshing photo or story of winter. Yes, we've done something like this before. And, if you recall, it worked. Also, it's easy and it's too hot to do anything complicated. So let's do it again (just, you know, don't reuse stuff that you've already posted along this line before).

Extra Credit: Would you rather be too hot or too cold?

Um, you do know I live in Tucson, right? The fact that it sometimes doesn't snow here for several years at a time, coupled with my propensity for overkill in doing these assignments (and the Monday Photo Shoot, Round Robin, etc.) means that I have pretty much shot my wad on snow pictures. And Tucson winters may be relatively cool, but they don't exactly tell the story of winter coolness. (By the way, the car thermometer at lunchtime today said 101 degrees. At 7:15 PM it was down to 96 degrees. Top that, you folks Back East!)

Still, I took lots of photos when it snowed in January, and I've scanned in our photos of snow in the desert from 1986 and 1987, and I point a camera at the Catalinas whenever snow can be seen from the city below. I've labored over scans of badly-developed photos of half-frozen Niagara Falls from February 1986, and a winter carnival in Montreal. I've even cleaned up faded photos taken in Manlius in the early 1970s. None of this really helps, though, because I've posted them all. Click on the label "Snow" in my sidebar, and you'll see most of them. Still others are in old AOL-J entries in Musings. Given all the times I've done entries about snow, are there any photos left on the subject that I haven't posted? Any at all?

Yes. But it took some doing to find and prepare them.

First I did a little survey to see what I had that I might not have posted yet. This involved both opening photo folders on the new computer (which currently has almost every image that's on the external hard drive) and Googling "mavarin snow". As I expected, the Manlius ones have all been posted at least once, ditto the Niagara Falls ones and the Tucson White Christmas ones.

January 22, 2007. From Wilmot Road.

Ah, but the January 2007 "weather" folder had lots of photos. Maybe I hadn't quite used all of them! So I made a chart:

Picture Project	Jan 07/weather
Title	features	Used
snow4513	car window, early on
snow4517	car, falling snow	Snow! 1/22
snow4524	night, aloe	Snow! 1/22
snow4527	car office night
snow4528	car office night	Snow! 1/22 (raw)
snow4529	car office night, back window	Snow! 1/22
snow4530	night tree	Snow! 1/22
snow4531	night trees	When Cold 1 2/7
snow4532	night tree, yard, underlit
snow4533	night trees, yard	Snow! 1/22
snow4534	firecracker, night
snow4535	yard, car, night	Round Robin blog
snow4536	firecracker day	When Cold 2 2/8, DF 4/3
snow4537	trees day	Snow by Day 1/23, DF 4/3
snow4539	mountains day	Snow by Day 1/23
snow4541	mountains day
snow4542	mountains day
snow4543	mountains day, road	When Cold 2 2/8
snow4545	mountains, day
snow4547	palms, day	Snow by Day 1/23
snow4548	parking lot, day
snow4549	parking lot, day
snow4550	mountains, parking lot, day	Snow by Day 1/23
snow4551	aloe, day	When Cold 2 2/8

Also January 22, 2007. From the ULC parking lot.

Which allows me to come up with two more semi-decent photos for you! (Above.)

Snow-dusted desert plants, Grannen Road back yard, 1987

Next step was to go through actual physical photos. Fortunately, the bulk of our snow-related photos are in binders, and they're kept in our library these days. Two of the binders provided one previously unscanned snow photo each. Success! Not wanting to use them both up at once, I'll leave the one with the balloon for another time.

A chess motif in snow, Montreal, February 1986

Ah, but I really hit the jackpot when I found Binder #1, which had the Niagara Falls and Montreal photos! There were three Winter Carnival sculptures I hadn't scanned, plus an alternate view of a fourth one. Photo by JBlocher (that's John, folks).

Jenny frolics in the frozen North, February 1986

And I have fond memories of Princess Guinevere of Westcott St. (a.k.a. Jenny Dog) frolicking in the snow. They were on the roll that came out gray (with gray snow!), so they're not very good. But I managed to salvage this shot, more or less, and one other.

Niagara Falls, River and frozen tree, a little less gray

And yes! Best of all, I found one, count 'em, one! Niagara Falls shot I hadn't scanned before. Well, all right, there were also a couple of shots of the Niagara River, but I didn't bother with those tonight.

I'll save them for the next time John Scalzi longs for snow.

On the extra credit: it occurs to me that I have now lived almost as long in Tucson (21 years) as in metro Syracuse (22 years). I've been away from those miserable winters for a big chunk of my life, even if you count the slightly less miserable Columbus winters (1979-1986). But I'd still rather be hot than cold. Now, if we're allowed to do something about the hot or cold - dress warmly or get under the A/C, then maybe...no. Still taking the air conditioned hotness over the seven layers of clothing coldness.

Karen