OK, hate to be acting like I own Slog or something, or like I know how to deal with snow or something, but being from Chicago, I can only say:

HAVE FUN. And. . .

Accept that Mother Nature is in charge, and as the contemporary avatar of the Goddess, Neko Case, has put it, "Never turn your back on Mother Earth. . . "

Go for a walk and listen to how different a city blanketed in snow sounds. See how different the familiar streets and houses and trees and parks look. Feel how different it is to walk on snow and ice. Look for a cardinal or a bluejay vivid against the white.

Put out food for birds and rabbits and squirrels. Stay home from work if you can. Keep warm. Ignore politics. Hunker down. Read some poetry, drink something hot, make a pot of soup. Eat the soup with good bread and olive oil or butter. Have a drink with people you love.

After the jump, some poems . . . some of which have lines applicable to tonight's politics.

Snow
By Louis MacNeice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes?
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands?
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
1935

An anonymous Irish poem that explains why I'm posting to Slog instead of asleep: I don't have to get up in the morning:

"Sweet is the scholar's life,
busy about his studies,
the sweetest lot in Ireland
as all of you know well.

No king or prince to rule him
nor lord however mighty,
no rent to the chapterhouse,
no drudging, no dawn-rising.

Dawn-rising or shepherding
never required of him,
no need to take his turn
as watchman in the night.

He spends a while at chess,
and a while with the pleasant harp
and a further while wooing
and winning fine women.

His horse-team hale and hearty
at the first coming of Spring;
the harrow for his team
is a fistful of pens."

-Anonymous (17th century Ireland)

And of course, Robert Frost:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.

Anyone other than me really pissed to hear this great poem in a car commercial lately?