My favorite winter photos and poem

While I was trying to come up with photo art for this month's banner, I went through the recent snow pictures I had taken. I liked them well enough, but realized I preferred these photos of our city's park most likely taken in the 1940s or 50s.


Our city is celebrating its centennial this year, so I've been pulling out the local memorabilia to share on my other blog. These photos were passed on to me, through my parents, from an old family friend when she passed away. Out of all my siblings, I'm the most enamored of family and local history and, therefore, have become the keeper of the treasures of our past.


I've taken pictures in this park at all times of the year. I even shared them here last spring. None of them seem as serene as the vintage images do. I think I have to go back the next time we get a big snowfall.


This poem has always been on of my favorites. Perfect for getting out of those mid-January doldrums. Makes me rethink how I feel about the cold and snow.

The Snowman
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.


Here is an NPR commentary about it.

PS Anyone know why my banner photo is overlapping the templates frame on the right? Nothing seems to work to make it fit and it's bugging me.