Stopping by the neighborhood on a snowy morning

Walking the dog lets me see some phenomena of nature I might otherwise miss. Remember my story about the frost flowers? This morning I got to see another sight, new and unique.

We were on the streets just before the crack o' dawn. Yesterday's fresh snowfall had received a thin overnight coating of Colorado's famous powder, perfectly formed crystals that absorb and reradiate light like so many billions of microscopic mirrors. Like the surface of a mountain lake, the brilliant blue of the predawn sky colored the snow everywhere. Near the streetlamps, the sides of drifts and piles facing the lamps were splashed with yellow light. And all of the east-facing snow features glowed with the orange and pink of the horizon that heralded the coming of a perfect sunrise.

If we stood in the right place, we could see all three colors of snow at once. It was magic at six below (that's 21 below for my Canubian and European readers), but it was short-lived magic. Twenty minutes later, all the snow was a brilliant white.

Colors

Every now and then, a woman on Facebook will change her status to a single word, or post a single word in response to someone else, and it's always a color. I quickly caught on to what this was about.

I think it's an admirable show of solidarity, and I take my hat off to the sisterhood of women.

There's only one problem.

I know all of these women.

Not in the Biblical sense, but I know who they are. And when one of them calls out a color, a picture flashes on the movie screen of my mind. You can figure out the contents of the picture. It's only there for an instant, thankfully, but it's usually (okay, ALWAYS) a picture I really didn't want to see.

It's not their problem; it's mine. I'll deal with it. But I wonder how long it will take for Lance Armstrong to think that this exercise is a good idea for the rest of the species.

And how many men will be brave enough to honestly answer "white"?