The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Where I come from, the American South, snow is rare. Or at least it used to be. When it comes, it’s a momentous event. New gleeful opportunities for entertainment and beautiful fun.

It’s also dangerous, since state and local governments are rarely prepared. It always seems to snow a little more than the forecasters predict.

When I was a teenager and it snowed in Birmingham, Alabama, I was always ready to take off and drive around in it and hook up with friends to find or create a party. Danger be damned. The invulnerability of youth.

Mom always worried, but didn’t stand in the way.

“For heaven’s sake, son, be careful…” she would always say.

She was right to worry. It only takes one little misstep to bring on disaster. I guess maybe I was careful, or at least not totally reckless.

In the winter of 1993, we got over 11 inches, nearly a foot, and everybody on Southside stopped working, going to classes at UAB and everything else to paint the town red, as they used to say in the Westerns.

At that time I happened to be hanging out with my good friend Spider Martin, the photographer. We found a sled and slid down the hill on the first fairway at Highland Golf Course. Then that night, we hiked on foot downtown to see Garrison Keillor do the “Prairie Home Companion” public radio show live. There were no snow plows to clear the roads. All went well. We survived and had fun. No one got hurt.

Here in the nation’s capital metro area, snow is not so unusual, perhaps becoming less frequent than in the past due to climate change from global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation.

Yet it’s always beautiful — until it all turns to black ice and the power goes out. Then the glee turns to fear.

Here in this forest just 10 miles due north of the Washington Monument, we got a little more than three inches of the fluffy white stuff on Monday night and Tuesday, and at least that much Friday morning. It measured seven inches at one point according to an old wooden measuring stick. It’s beautiful, and I will get out at some point to snap more pictures — after the snow plows get here.

See more photos below…

But I must admit that youthful exuberance I felt oh so long ago, to get out in it and fashion a snowman, slide down a hill, is long gone.

The wisdom of the ages, or just age. It’s a beautiful danger.

Messing around in it is a bit like trying to get a closeup cell phone picture of a bison in Yellowstone. You could get gored and flipped in one situation, slip and fall and get stuck and hurt yourself in another, potentially in a way that could shorten your life significantly.

Safety first. That’s our motto now and from now on. I’ve seen too many friends diminish after a fall, a wreck.

Speaking of wrecks, at least one train wreck was avoided on Friday.

Government Funding

It looked almost inevitable that the federal government was going to shutdown again, right in the middle of the second blizzard of 2024. One disaster on top of another. There was a fear that Congress would adjourn and members would fly home to avoid the blizzard on Friday without passing a funding bill.

But another short-term miracle happened.

Even though money bills are supposed to originate in the House, at least according to the rules, there’s no one in the Dixie Caucus leadership capable of writing a funding bill. It would be against their anti-government principles anyway.

So the Senate took it up and passed it, sending it over to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson brought it up on the House floor for a vote. It funds the government until March. The Democrats in the House passed it, along with some Republican support, on a vote of 314 to 108, a day before funding for many government agencies was to lapse. The Senate provided overwhelming bipartisan support and approved it 77-18.

This came, of course, over the strenuous opposition of far-right MAGA Republicans, according to the New York Times.

The so-called House Freedom Caucus urged Republicans to reject the bill, calling it a continuation of policies established by President Biden and the Democrat-controlled Congress in 2022. Yep. Policies supported overwhelmingly by a majority of the American people.

“Speaker Mike Johnson should walk away from his agreement with Senate Majority Leader Schumer and pass an appropriations package that meaningfully reduces spending year-over-year and secures our southern border,” the caucus said in a statement.

But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said after the bill passed, “There will not be a shutdown on Friday!”

“Because both sides have worked together, the government will stay open,” Schumer said. “Services will not be disrupted. We will avoid a needless disaster.”

Passage of this bill and continuing resolution gives Congress another six weeks to negotiate and pass a dozen spending bills to fund the government through the fall. As it stands the budget plan includes $1.66 trillion, the same level Democrats and Republicans agreed to before. It holds most federal spending steady, with more help for the military.

President Biden was to sign it before the midnight deadline on Friday. It was the third time since the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1 that Congress had to extend government spending on a temporary basis.

Meanwhile back to the snow.

More Photos

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

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