I was afraid this was going to happen

Matt Benney says the thing about blogging is that when you have things to blog about, you're too busy to do it, and when you have time to blog, there's nothing to blog about. True, true. But I prefer to think of it more like this:

Silence

By Billy Collins

There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a motionless player on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the floor,
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

The stillness of the cup and the water in it.
the silence of the moon
and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

The silence when I hold you to my chest,
the silence of the window above us,
and the silence when you rise and turn away.

And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house-
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.

Brook Green in the snow

My mate Matt made a really rather lovely little video about our neighbourhood green in the snow the other day.

A woman in Germany

Is having a bit of a rough time, and needs to know she's not alone.

What's a little snow?

So London has been smacked by a record snowfall. This is unusual. As unusual, say, as palm trees growing in Canada. It's rarity has been documents by the hundreds or even thousands of blog posts, Facebook pictures and status updates, and my favourites, Twitter posts.

Naturally, the storm has brought one of the world's great metropolis' to a standstill. At 3 pm, the Tube is still, for the most part, shut down, and virtually the entire bus network has been suspended all day. Our office closed, as did many others for want of employees who could make it into work.

It is, by any standard, a proper Minnesota snowstorm. But unlike, say, Minneapolis, London understandably just isn't equipped to handle this amount of snow. Minneapolis alone has a fleet of 400-odd snowplows, and would have had the roads plowed in time for rush hour this morning.

I personally enjoyed the snow very much. It brought back to me one of the things I miss about Minneapolis--the natural beauty of winter. And this time, I didn't have to endure two months of unbearable freezing cold to enjoy it.

Late in the afternoon, it occured to me that I would need to shovel my staircase so it wouldn't freeze (thanks Pops, for the knowledge). Like, perhaps, the rest of London, I lacked the one thing I needed to deal with the snow. So I used my dustpan:

A Queen's guardsman cracks

And puts a not inconsiderable dent in the British sense of identity. He didn't just smile. He didn't just flinch. He flipped out.

The remaking of America

Got a funny call from my mum the other day. She called to ask me if it was ok for my dad to take my letter jacket from high school to the charity shop on Martin Luther King Day. I said no, on the grounds that my childhood memories have already, save the aforementioned jacket, been resigned to just one box in the basement. And that earning that letter jacket is still one of my proudest achievements.

I didn't give much thought to the call. I was thinking about other things. Like the speech. How wonderful it felt to not feel cynicism and hatred for your government. To believe in something again.

There's an interesting take on the speech over at I Noticed This and I won't get into an analysis of Obama's speech. Mostly because it's done better at the NY Times. But also because I thought his call to remake America was a bit glib, and that it would fall on the deaf ears of a populace who had been burned too many times by politicans who said one thing, and then did another. It had obvious links to JFK's 'ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country', and could therefore be considered political posturing.

But I was wrong to think that the Obamas would not be able to mobilise the country. I'd asked my mum why, out of character, my dad was taking old clothes to the charity shop.

'Because he got an email from Michelle Obama asking him to celebrate MLK day by doing something for poor people.'

Spread the word

Please watch this video. Well, if you're here, you probably already have. I have posted this video for several reasons.

Ths first is that it, as a piece of art and how I learned about it, is a perfect example of what the tools and behaviours of the internet can do that no other medium (and I hesitate to use that word) can do.

It is a beautiful piece of work that only a few years ago would not have been possible without the backing of a wealthy client. It's a piece of art that did not get forced into the middle of my favourite TV show, but rather one that I have chosen to watch, because a friend of mine sent it to me.

Now I share it with you. And this is exactly what you can do in digital that you can't do anywhere else. I was the 230,109th person to watch it. And that will only grow as it goes viral. I would like to use my rather limited reach to help the makers of this film out. That's the important thing you can do with a film digitally that you can't do with a well-made commercial. You can immediately help out by sending it on. No £2 ask, no number to call.

But the main reason why I am writing to you tonight, as a member of humanity (and their much over-analisyed alter egos, consumers), is that this film, and it course through the Internet , drew a straight line between the homeless people featured and my own experience. As someone who only made it through the ass end of freelancing because of the compassion of his friends, I recognise the desolation and isolation from humanity.

And I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Ever.

Thanks to Lucas Levitan for reminding me.