iced-over

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It has been a brutal couple of weeks – temperatures have been in the single digits and snow-fall has been constant. (the northern and the eastern parts of the state have gotten the worst of the mid-January storms)
It seems like it’s turning out to be an exceptionally hard winter and Candlemas – mid-winter – isn’t for another 10 days.

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The Allegheny, traveling some 352 miles southward from Coudersport, Pennsylvania, is covered by ice and snow. The city of Pittsburgh, as well as most of the small towns along its 352 miles, get their drinking water from this shallow, clean river. The ice/snow on the Allegheny suggest a healthy river.

In contrast, the Monongahela – the river at the bottom right – is a working river and any ice on it is quickly broken up to insure safe barge traffic. (the Mon, like the Nile, flows north to join the Allegheny at The Point – the view outside my window)

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I saw The Brutalist earlier this week; the film is set in Eastern Pennsylvania after The War. One of the points it makes is that Pennsylvania, in the 1940s and the 1950s, was the California/Silicon Valley of its day; we were the future. California became the future in the 1960s. (Massachusetts, New York, Illinois all had their turn at pointing to what was coming)
I’ve always seen the American states the same way that historians see the countries of Europe – independent but connected. And several states have had their turn at the helm of the country; they have steered the country; they’ve introduced elements that have changed the country forever. And I’m hoping that this independence will help us get through the next four years. And I’m hoping that this state sovereignty will help us avoid the mass-hysteria, the mass-control of fascism.