Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

A late March snowfall obscures the previously blue sky. With scattered snow flakes graying out the sun. No justice from puns and prose or even a desperate try. Instead the rotating orb does not stop for even a mourning dove's elegiacal cry. An old woman on the slushy sidewalk, dodging ice chunks, wishes winter was done. A late March snowfall obscures the previously blue sky. A muffled snore of a world never reborn nor showing its fragile eye It slumbers in fits and starts that block out the ruminating sun No justice from puns and prose or even a desperate try Where are the frolicking foxes? Are the mousy bunnies too shy? The places they once cherished, they now practically shun. A late March snowfall obscures the previously blue sky. The snow crunches beneath my feet even though I hoped to wish the season goodbye. The icy touch of spring, an irony that's lost much of its fun. No justice from puns and prose or even a desperate try. Soon it will turn to slush and the seasonal ach...

Place matters in the grand scheme  as we plan the rest of our short lives in between careers, births, and death, tracing the lines of worry and doubt on faces that age like earthen masks,  cracking and morphing into new forms  that recall our parents and their familiar tragedies and strategies in months that begin with archaic, internalized letters, fomenting lethargy and resilience like the graying maples and elms, the wintry oaks, the desolate brown topped spruce,  as those seasons change and loss becomes static reality in this Upper Peninsula, this region of utmost cold, where the snow falls and blankets the silent masses, ergo, a laugh, a sound, an eruption of jubilant life in resistance to the colors that drain, clamorously calling out for meaning.  Ha! Relentless ones! You are stuck here! Lift up your choices and dig in!

The weather is a bummer. Cold and grey, melting snow, traversed by numerous cars, is all there is. The air feels heavy and stolid. So am I. Impassive, lethargic, plodding, I shift along the sidewalk. A robot, increasingly shiftless. A ne'er do well on a quest of nothingness.

Aches in the bones, moving slowly, my body refuses to cooperate Sick and sad over the cold weather; it's frigid out there waiting White winds blow white snow over white roads -- white The grey skies sit against heavy trees, laden with yesterday's batch. Twisted slivers of air, cold shards of temperature, ever dropping Except when it warms to snow. The supermarkets are full of shoppers trying to miss the weather, bundled up like yesterday's babies, blocking the aisles, hogging the warmth. I stand looking at boxes of fabric softener. Later, at home, I count my books and avert my gaze from the windows. Snow on the window ledge only strengthens the ache.

I have a fascination with railway trestles and bridges, dating back to my childhood. I used to collect discarded railroad spikes and bridge spikes from the train yards and tracks near my house. Here are several pictures of concrete railroad bridges and the tunnels underneath them along U.S. Route 8 in Lincoln County near the small unincorporated community of Tripoli. I pass this way every time I venture north, and I have wanted to look at them more closely for awhile. I finally snapped a few snowy photos. Hopefully, I can explore these bridges in more depth this summer. They remind me of pictures of the infamous "Bunny Man Bridge" in Virginia.

Not to sound cliched, but there is something different about the North Woods during a frigid winter. Heavy snow nestles in clumps on the median, pine trees are heavy with white, and dark, large crows crowd telephone lines. Small towns and hamlets find protection from encircling balsams. Greyish snow is caked on signposts from the morning plows, pushing, salting, and sanding the world into a shape more suitable to people's whims. The drifting snow covers doorsteps, as the wind whips and whirls outside. The temperature is only -1, but it might drop into the -20's. Even in Illinois, this stops traffic, closes schools, changes the day to day. Here it isn't as common as it once was, but it still creates less of an event. Cars don't start, and there are always more accidents on the first days after a snowfall. Yet as winter settles in, even the deer and birds seem to disappear, except at feeders. Of course, those crows remain, ever watching, ever circling. The worl...

"Christmas Day" is a seven-minute gothic country exploration of loneliness. White tells the story of another lonely man stranded on his way to Mobile. The "devil is in the details" as the narrator sits crying at the Greyhound Station on Christmas Day in 1998. The sparse guitar work underlines the tragic experience and White's vocals only make it more harrowing. The song is one of the loss and love that are seldom explored in most well-known Christmas songs which typically prefer to gloss over the loneliness that comes with this season, instead piling up a hootenanny of pleasant experiences. Even the songs rife with loneliness prefer to traffic in what the narrator hopes to find at home or misses, instead of reveling in loss. "Christmas Day" doesn't do that; the narrator wallows in self pity and continually returns to the sweet smile of his love. He discusses the good fiction that the situation might make, weaving in between reality and unreality...

I drove up to northern Wisconsin yesterday through alternating rain and sun. Once I drove past Tomahawk the rain turned to slushy snow and sleet. Turning onto highway 8, traffic trailers, trucks loaded down with planks, and general messiness slowed me down. The trees up here are still struggling to leaf out and the brown, dirty grass attempts to push past random snow piles. In Illinois, the trees are in full bloom, yet the nights are cold and wet. I'm glad to be back in the North Woods, if just for a couple of days. The place is lovely even in its worse vernal dress. The birds are attempting to sing, hastening the full arrival of spring, then summer -- all before the darkening doom and gloom of the change back to fall in the northern woods. The seasons here change in a heartbeat. The earth and the people are always hopeful that the seasons might just last a bit longer. Luckily, they don't have to put up with stretches of 100 percent humidity for weeks at a time that ...

I'm sitting here listening to Charlie Rich's 1974 LP, The Silver Fox on this snowy evening, drinking hot cocoa, and once in awhile glancing at the snow as it drifts slowly to the ground. The record came out shortly after his countrypolitan breakthrough, Behind Closed Doors , but surpasses that overproduced, yet very satisfying album. Rich feels at ease on this one, telling stories about his development as an artist. The Billy Sherill production does not seem as overblown, and Rich's natural delivery anticipates the MTV Unplugged performances of a decade  and a half later. He does an interesting medley that includes classical pieces he learned as a child, a satisfying bluesy version of "Don't Put No Headstone on My Grave," and a rocking and rolling version of the song "Break-Up," which he had recorded earlier for Sun Records. Rich was a musical chameleon who excelled at many styles and it is never more evident than on the Medley's choice mix of s...

When I was younger, I used to love snow. I would go skiing regularly, barely feeling the cold. I would push myself over hills competing in an imaginary race. If my dad was with me, I would try to beat him even though he could ski much faster. I spent hours training on the kiddie hills trying to master the wishbone technique for climbing difficult hills. I soon realized that the faster I could go, the easier it would be to climb the next hill.  The snowy pine trees and flitting chickadees were a welcoming sight five miles down the ski trail after a difficult run. Although I get envious when I see an older skate skier zoom by and leave me in the lurch. My younger body cannot compete with these octogenarians who ski daily, their arms and legs purely muscled. I still feel like a skinny kid, although I am much bigger, older, and out of shape. I would ski more if there was more snow. Each year we get less and less, the trails are practically bare here. Muddy ruts -- they resemble d...