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It turns out my parents were inspired by the photo of the snowman-adorned statue, as you can tell from this photo of my father taken by my mother:


p.s. Isn't that a nice scarf his daughter knit him?

p.p.s. I'm only sorry there is no snowman on his head!

For Estaminet:

Timothy was right: snow is infrequent in these parts--enough so that the mere prediction can cause school closings. And no one knows how to drive in it: the sheer number of SUVs in ditches when there is a dusting on the ground is amazing. And I am not even going to dignify with a comment the assumption that a four-wheel-drive vehicle is impervious to ice.

I think we got about four inches, but that is based on my eye-balling rather than any official data.

The Blizzard of 2008.

Last night, even before we went to bed (and you know how dorkily early that is), there was about a half an inch of snow on the ground. Overnight, I had snow dreams. It was worse than anticipating Santa: I woke up again and again, and got up to look outside. I could hear heavy sleet at some points, at some points it was nearly silent.

On our morning walk, the Patient Partner and I started noticing something interesting: our city's many bronze statues all had snowmen on their heads. The first ones we saw were on the heads of the pair of students commemorating Sterling High School, the first African American public high school in the county, and we hoped that these snowmen were in the spirit of fun and nothing more. But then we came to Vardry McBee, seated peacefully on his bronze bench, sporting his own fine snowman hat (though his snowman seemed to have lost its arms). Not to be left out, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson also wore a snowman hat (though we had hoped that perhaps someone would have affixed a snowball to his bat). My favorite was Nathanael Greene, Revolutionary War hero and holder of a long-nosed miniature snowman along with his spyglass. The snowman adorning Joel Roberts Poinsett, namesake of the poinsettia, must have gone the way of so many, may they melt in peace. Best of all, Nobel laureate Charles H. Townes had one on his head, one on each shoulder, and one in the fold of his hands. Now that's a city father for you!