Sunday, February 28, 2010

Shoveling , enough with the shoveling, already…


By the time March rolls around, I’ve had more than my share of shoveling snow. I recall as a young child seeing March represented pictorially in our school readers as kids flying kites on breezy days with big puffy cumulus clouds floating by. I always felt a little cheated as our March in upstate NY was represented by more snow shoveling. This applied to a good portion of April as well. Along the about the middle of April, around NCAA Final Four time, you felt like just stopping with all the shoveling, and figured sooner or later it HAD to be spring and this stuff would melt. We had neighbors named Scheifendecker in Syracuse who adopted this philosophy in December, and even in the formidable face of the 140 inches of snow the area received each winter, discarded their snow shovels and simply aimed their big Ford sedan towards the driveway opening and floored it. Coming home from work, Mr. Scheifendecker would speed up as he approached his driveway, and using the weight of the large vehicle as momentum, would skillfully take aim and barrel up and over the accumulated snow. Well, part of the way up over it, anyways. Their house was directly across the street from ours, and when we heard the sound of someone gunning a big V-8 and tires spinning, we knew Mr. Scheifendecker had arrived home from work and was making an attempt at forcing his land yacht up his drive way. We didn’t have cable TV, and this daily spectacle of snow flying from his spinning rear wheels, his technique of backing up and repeatedly ramming the front end into the season’s accumulation of snow, and eventually ending up with his car perched haphazardly on the hard packed mound covering his driveway became quite a source of entertainment for our family. Mr. Scheifendecker bore a strong resemblance to former Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger, and to see him emerge from his vehicle in such a calm and collected manner after this display of how to use a Ford Crown Vic as a three-thousand pound toboggan never failed to make me smile. Eventually, along about Final Four time, I grew weary of the constant snow shoveling and found myself using our own Dodge Dart to “Scheifendecker” my way up our driveway. After doing my best to emulate my neighbor’s technique and walking to the front door past my unattended snow shovel, confident that spring would get here and melt this stuff more sooner than later, I felt as calm and collected as Dr. Henry Kissinger. (Posted by Rich Harrington)

Thursday, February 25, 2010

SNOWMAGEDDON!!!!!

This has been a particularly tough winter in Bucks County. Tough by Bucks County standards, that is; being from Upstate Central New York, I consider myself a snow-hardened winter tough-guy, although I do have to admit that the comparatively balmy weather here has softened me up quite a bit. But when you come down to it, it’s winter, and it’s going to be cold, windy, and snowy.

The news media here, however, seems fascinated by the fact that it is indeed cold, windy, and snowy, and is quick to sensationalize the snowstorms. A large winter storm in early February was labeled both ”Snowmageddon!” and “ The Snowpocalypse!” in large headlines, both on-line and in traditional newsprint. This seemed all well and good on February 5th and 6th for the duration of this cataclysmic white out, but when an even larger storm came along to top it a few days later on February 10th and 11th, it appeared to have been a rash decision to have used up these superlatives so quickly. At least the weather events of the 10th and 11th storm could safely have been labeled as “The Storm of the Decade!”

In light of the terms used to describe these weather events, I think the news media would do well by borrowing from the lexicon and history of sports reporting and sport-talk radio. Storms can be safely compared to historic legends noted for their power, fury, and short tempers – like “The Babe Ruth of Cold Fronts!”...."A 1993 Chicago Bulls-izzard!!" or “The Bobby Knight of Chair-Throwing Thunderstorms ! “.

These weather disturbance could be described as a play-by-play announcer would call it: “ It's a long, towering, line drive home run of a snowstorm!”. Who wouldn’t want to run out and panic shop for bread and beer when a “Steel Cage Death Match Snowstorm!” is blowing in out of the North?

Personally, I prefer to use a book from my childhood to gauge the intensity of snowstorms; these past two Mother Of All Snowstorms that visited us this month in my estimation really amounted to a ”Katy Level 2” and a “Katy Level 1” snowstorms.

I base this description on the book “Katy and the Big Snow” by Virginia Lee Burton. In that book, a town is saved from it’s own “Snowmageddon” ( or, “Superbowl of Snow”, as I prefer to call it) by a diligent tractor that slowly but tirelessly plows everyone out . And, I suppose, also plugs up the ends of a lot of driveways of people who had just completed their own “Olympic Marathon of Shoveling”… but, just as we tend to remember the winners of the big events and focus on the victorious crowds, the scenes of disgruntled homeowners shaking their fists at the large deposits of snow piled up in the wake of Katy at the foot of their driveways ( “dammit! just when I had shoveled enough for a bread and beer run!”) isn’t shown.

Tonight in Bucks County we are experiencing another storm, with up to 12 inches of snow expected and winds gusting to 50 miles and hour. Indeed, as I type this I can hear the winds howling outside and feel our old house shudder as it bears the third Snowpocalypse of this month.

I for one am hoping this weather event becomes “The Bill Buckner of Showstorms “…
(posted by Rich Harrington)

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Barking Beagles!



I had a beagle once- a dear sweet dog, she was always happy, and most happy when she was eating something. Often it did not seem to matter to her WHAT she was eating, as long as it fit down her gullet in 2 or 3 large bites before I could get it away from her. She was also very happy when sniffing or barking, and she alternated quite easily between these two activities. She often multi-tasked this with great efficiency as well, especially when a client visited my studio, and hence the name "Barking Beagle Studio" came about. There seemed to be a number of Richard Harrington's working as freelance illustrators at the time, so I took advantage of the adorable but noisy little pup I picked up off the streets of Syracuse to help with my identity crisis; I became the Richard Harrington With The Dog. She inspired me to create the image above...(Posted by Rich Harrington)