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A little ice, a little snow...a little insane.

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The imperfect storm

A puny example of winter weather: a thin coat of snow, a little ice, the sky ingraciously spitting a few flakes in our direction.

And yet, it was a weather disaster.

People behaved like Floridians on vacation in Denver at Christmas. It was as if they'd never seen this white stuff on the ground before and had no idea how to drive in it.

Schools were canceled, church services abandoned. Making the commute to Lexington this morning, there were casualties strewn along the sides of the highway--cars that didn't quite make it, laid to waste by a skiff of snow.

Admittedly, there were a couple of touchy spots. Stopping meant allowing for a little more distance to slow down.

One guy flipped his JEEP. He climbed out okay, but a little stunned as a photojournalist rushed to capture his expression. The noon newscasts were devoted to minute-by-minute coverage of the weather event of the season. They interviewed people rushing to buy bread and milk. (Why is it always bread and milk? Why doesn't anyone hurry to stock up on Italian sausage and green tea?)

Going home today should be interesting.

Let's hope we make it through this alive.

There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery secret. -- John Galsworthy

One of the great blessings of my life was spending my childhood in the cradle of nature. Our home, the house still occupied by my parents, stands in a valley, mountains rising on three sides, the Cumberland River marking the fourth boundary. At one time, my ancestors, mostly Scot immigrants who had stopped for a time in northern Ireland, owned land as far as the eye could see. My grandfather had tried to keep the land intact, but in time, it has been carved up to a fraction of its size. Still, a large expanse remains, and it was my playground.

My mother's fear of snakes kept me out of the forest most of the year, but when a good snowfall came, if it had been preceded by a sufficient number of days with temperatures below freezing, my mother would let us go out and wander to our heart's content, with instructions only to be back by a certain time.

One winter expedition taught me a healthy fear of the power of nature, and the cradle that could rock rather fiercely.

After bundling up until my arms and legs were nearly immobile, I went out into a snowfall that reached my knees. Normally, I hiked an old wagon path--now used for tractors to take feed to the horses and cattle. But this time, I started up the side of the mountain, so dense there were places that were impassible. The weight of the snow pulled pine branches low and made them heavy to move aside so that I could walk between the trees. The higher I climbed, the faster my heart pounded--not just from the exertion, but from the feeling of seeing something new, something perhaps no one had seen before, even if it was just a tree or rock or some stubborn bush. It was my expedition.

I remember the almost tangible quiet of that day as I looked back to make sure I could still see the plume of smoke from our chimney. No rumble of the highway across the valley or chatter of birds or squirrels. No sign of life but my own. The only break in the icy expanse of noiseless calm was the occasional crack of a branch giving way to the snow, and my own breath.

At some point, I turned to look again at the valley below me, but found myself surrounded by a fortress of snow-laden pine boughs and bare grey trunks as straight and unwelcoming as prison bars. I turned in this direction and that, and there was no clearing. Claustrophobia took hold, and for a moment I was as frozen as the trees in my fear. I called out, but it seemed as though the snow silenced my cries as if I'd been shouting into a comforter draped across a clothes line.

Full-on panic grabbed hold, and I began to run blindly, guided only by gravity as I sought to get down the hill. I fell several times as I went, at one point nearly falling on a broken tree branch sticking up from the forest floor like a spear. Down, down I went, until I found myself propelled free from the trees and plummeting down a bare hillside not far from my house.

I remember lying on the ground for a moment. Beneath the snow, it was hard and unforgiving, but I was glad to have found it. I moved one leg, then the other, then both arms. By then, I was numb with cold, and it took me a moment to get up and make my way to the house. My mother greeted me at the door, angry and worried, but soon, I had warm clothes and hot cocoa by the fire, as was our ritual.

When I hear people say that it doesn't snow the way it used to, I take it into perspective. I don't doubt that it will snow--really snow--eventually, maybe tonight. On most days this winter, as I pass the crisp black fencerows and see the sun shining off the backs of the horses in their confines, I wonder what the snow will be like for them, and anticipate a new poetic scene to witness. Still, I think the naysayers are right, in a sense. For me, no winter will be like those I knew in the mountains. (Given my sense of direction, or lack therof, perhaps that's for the best.)

That's the thing about memories, though. They keep those moments with us and become a part of who we are.

Let it snow.

Next time, knock--and lock

The hallowed halls of one of our state's premier universities was filled with cries of horror this afternoon. And it was my fault--sort of.

Preparing to give a presentation just a couple of doors down from the president's office, I had a few minutes to spare and made a dash for the bathroom across the hall. I opened one of the stalls to see someone I knew sitting there in a compromised position. She screamed, and startled, I screamed. I'm not sure why, looking back on it. It wasn't the most pleasant scene, but it wasn't as if I'd encountered an axe murderer on the other side of the stall door. Maybe it was all the caffeine I had in my tea at lunch, or the adrenaline that preceeds public speaking. Or it simply could have been the horror of recognizing the shocked face staring back at me and, in a nanosecond, realizing that I would have to face her again, fully clothed.

Whatever caused it, the screams caused a melee of excitement, and soon, there were was a mass of people in the bathroom.

Fortunately, it was determined that the university president's security was not threatened.

Not unless he forgets to lock the stall door, too.

And now, the news...

The news doesn't have much news in it any more.

Maybe I'm a little young to be a curmudgeon, but our local news seems to have devolved into the "Wreck/Fire/Shooting of the Day." It's kind of like eating a candy bar for dinner. A quick fix, but it doesn't stick with you. (Unless it's a Butterfinger, maybe...I digress.)

As a wet-behind-the-ears journalist, first in print, and eventually in television and radio as well, I evolved from being an ambulance chaser who slept with a police scanner by the bed (I had developed the strange ability to filter out the chatter and awaken only when a code was called for an accident with injuries, the coroner, or the fire department). I became someone who measured the value of a story by how many people would be affected or whether there was some broad benefit to putting those words to print or saying them on the air. Unfortunately, my job occasionally still involved reporting on the less savory side of life, but by and large those measuring sticks made most stories worth my while in the latter part of my days as a reporter. (Although admittedly, I occasionally indulged my funny bone by writing about some of the more quirky things I observed.)

Since changing career paths (I now work in public relations), it's often hard for me to watch the local news. I still have friends in the business, and I respect them and what they do, but it seems the overall direction is a bit misguided. They argue that focus groups and viewer surveys and ratings books consistently indicate that we want to know about "breaking news," that is, if something is immediately happening, and we want to know about our personal safety and whether any crime or accidents have occurred. I admit those points have legs. But that doesn't mean I want to see a live shot of a reporter standing in front of a smoldering house that burned the night before, where no other homes were damaged and everyone made it out alive, or that the lead story should be an accident with an injured driver, when traffic wasn't really affected, and there were no unusual circumstances or criminal acts involved. And if Miss America is in trouble, well, I feel for her, but it's not worth a five-minute block of news, covering every angle of her angst. We're being fed "shock value" stories, and many of those are weak at best. It's not that much of it is not worth reporting--although an argument could be made there. It's just that those stories are not worth the emphasis being placed on them via station resources and my time spent watching them--at least until I can get my fingers on the remote.

What happened to stories that affect me and my family in tangible ways? What about our schools--and I don't mean whether somebody wrote a hit list, but what is going on in the classrooms? It doesn't have to be dull storytelling. In the right hands, it can be compelling. What about the faith community? Millions of us go to church or synagogue or some other house of worship each week. These are an important force in our society. What about health? What about finances--stories that help us have a healthier bottom line? What about our neighbors--and not those who are arrested, but those who are hungry? Or feeding the hungry? Or helping adults who never learned to read? What things has our state government done to affect how we live, work, play and pay?

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is an amazing place. There's more in it than the latest fender-bender or political fight or stabbing du jour.

Tell me about it.

How far have we come?

I was 11 years old the first time I heard a racist joke. Until that day, I wasn't even aware that social lines had been drawn according to skin color. The independent school system I attended in southeast Kentucky was along the main route between three states and had a relatively diverse student population, so I had never known what it meant to be segregated. My mother taught first grade, and once a year, she was asked to record the number of minority students in her class. She has often commented that she used to have to look at the children as she filled out the form because she had never paid much attention to race while she worked to fill her students' minds.

Just before I started sixth grade, our family moved to my mother's home town. It's a friendly place, but it was there, on my first day in new class with a sea of caucasion faces like mine, a small, red-haired boy told me a joke using a word I'd never heard before. I laughed nervously, pretending I understood, but when I went home and asked my mother what the word meant, she was horrified and told me to never say that word again. She told me about something called prejudice--pre-judging someone based on superficial characteristics. Later, I asked my new friend Kim, a pretty, dark-haired girl with pale blue eyes and dimpled cheeks, if there were any children in our school who weren't white. She looked at me very innocently and surprised. "I've never known anyone who wasn't," she answered. "Have you?"

I was in high school before I saw a minority student in our school system. Although I heard a few more racial slurs over the years, I found that most of the kids I came to know weren't racist but rather simply unaware of a culture other than our own, mostly so-called "Scots-Irish" ancestry (that's a discussion for another time).

Several years later, I've lived in several communities around the Commonwealth, from very small towns to more metro areas, and I have come to know people with rich and varied heritages and cultures. It makes life a rather interesting patchwork quilt. I relish the stories of my own family, and appreciate the value of histories as varied as the landscape of our world.

But if I had been lulled into thinking we're all holding hands around a unity candle, I was jarred back to reality for a moment in the waiting room at a doctor's office this week. The man next to me began to strike up a conversation about football, hunting, and finally, minorities.

"I'm about as prejudiced as they come," he announced, a measure of pride in his voice. It seemed to me that the crowded waiting room quieted.

It took me back to sixth grade and the awkward moment looking at little red-haired Todd.

There was no urge to laugh politely this time.

"I try my best not to be," I said shortly, and went back to reading a book.

Something made me look up, however. I raised my head and caught the eye of the woman directly across from me. A little girl with skin much darker than her own slept with her head on the woman's chest. The woman smiled.

I returned the smile, but with a troubling question whispering itself in my ear. How far have we come-- really?