Month: February 2010

Somebody in my house brought this home today, and it struck me as an ironic juxtaposition of concepts, so I had to blog about it. It’s a plastic holder for bandaids. With advertising. From a hospice. Of course the first thing that struck me was, “isn’t it a bit too late for bandaids when you’re choosing a hospice?” Or is it that each time you cut your finger you should have this memento mori? Or what exactly is the logic behind choosing this as an advertising medium? I can imagine the meeting where the marketing team was browsing the tchotchke catalog. “Let’s see, hospice frisbees, hospice thumb drives, hospice golf visors…YES! Bandaid holders!”

I have read Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name is Red, but I have not read Snow. I have had it on my “books to read” list for quite some time, but now I think I will cross it off. My impression about the book is that the presence of snow is pervasive, even oppressive. I think I don’t need to read it now because I’m living it.

Yesterday afternoon we finished clearing the three downed trees from the middle of the driveway that the last storm deposited. Now the piles of tree limbs along the sides of the yard are being covered with another layer of snow. The guys who were supposed to haul them all away a week ago didn’t come this morning as planned because of the freezing rain. They couldn’t clear the trees last week because they were glued to the driveway by the ice. They said they’d come tomorrow, but I think they won’t come because of the weather. We might be living in a tree graveyard until May.

An occasional snow is fine, even exciting, but if I wanted this much I would live in Minnesota, not Virginia.