21 February, 2019

Hi JoJo….it’s been a quite a while since I knocked out an installment, and today is an amazing day to do that, as it is actually snowing here in Vegas for the first time in 10 years!!  Yes…those are real photos of the view I have from my upper terrace this morning.  The temp is just 31 degrees and they’re saying we’ll have snow falling throughout the day.

I remember the snowfall 10 years ago because I was still working, and driving to work at 8:00PM to ADTS was the eeriest thing.  This town was completely covered in snow and extremely quiet…no people on the street (I imagine there were tons of folks out on the Strip, just marveling at the fact that it was snowing like it was a winter evening back East), and only a very few cars trying to navigate their way to wherever they had to be.

No one was in the parking lot of my workplace and when I got to work, knowing I would be alone until 6:00AM, I didn’t feel bad about taking a few moments that night to stand out in the middle of the lot and just take in the beauty of the falling snow.  A number of my friends over the years have heard me talk about having lived in New York and then returning to L.A., then ending up here in Sin City.   

They’re all familiar with one of my “Skip-isms”….I used to tell them, “Yeah, I don’t miss winter at all, and if I ever want to see snow again….I’ll rent the video!!” (smile)  Well, that night 10 years ago I didn’t have to rent a video….and I found myself mentally taking a trip back in time, remembering those snowy nights back East.  You would remember sweetheart, that I was pretty much by myself a lot during those years, working all those part-time jobs at all those crazy hours of the night.

The absolute silence that filled the atmosphere that night as I watched the snow fall, was all of a sudden, one of the most peaceful, serene, tranquil experiences I had enjoyed in a very long time.  That kind of feeling hit me this morning when I looked out the window and saw the golf course just covered in a beautiful white blanket….no footprints of golfers….no noise at all….just once again the amazingly calming vision of snowflakes cascading down, covering the mounds, the fairways, and the greens…of course, they weren’t so green at the moment. (smile)  It was just awesome!!

Tanuja and I talked this morning, and she suggested that it would be a great day to jump back into authoring a Chronicle, she wondered if I had any pieces that captured a theme that would work today, and I figured this would be cool to feature the pieces that I call “Arctic Playground.”

These pieces were gathered over a period of time and I happen to like the whimsical little Penguin sliding down as its mother looks on.  The little Polar Bear is pretty cute too as he /she (I never assigned a gender [smile]), stays under the watchful eye of Mom too.   Anyway, I guess I’ll end this little installment by noting that it feels pretty good, writing another Chronicle, after such a long hiatus.  The other thing that comes to mind JoJo, is the fact that I really should get back into the Chronicles.  There are actually a number of pieces that you’ve not seen because I haven’t photographed them yet….and there’s certainly no shortage of “stories behind the glass’ that are waiting to be told!