Thursday, February 13, 2014

Quote of the Day (Jose Marti, on a Worse NYC Snowstorm Than This One)



“It was impossible to see the sidewalks. Intersections could no longer be distinguished, and one street looked like the next. On Twenty-third Street, one of the busiest thoroughfares, a thoughtful merchant put a sign on a corner-post: “This is 23rd Street.” The snow was knee-deep, and the drifts, waist-high. The angry wind nipped at the hands of pedestrians, knifed through their clothing, froze their noses and ears, blinded them, hurled them backward into the slippery snow, its fury making it impossible for them to get to their feet, flung them hatless and groping for support against the walls, or left them to sleep, to sleep forever, under the snow. A shopkeeper, a man in the prime of life, was found buried today, with only a hand sticking from the snow to show where he lay. A messenger boy, as blue as his uniform, was dug out of a white, cool tomb, a fit resting place for his innocent soul, and lifted up in the compassionate arms of his comrades. Another, buried to the neck, sleeps with two red patches on his white cheeks, his eyes a filmy blue.”—Cuban poet and revolutionary Jose Marti, on the New York City Blizzard of March 13, 1888, in “New York Under the Snow,” La Nacion (Buenos Aires), April 27, 1888

Okay, maybe the unique thing about this weather pattern we’re in now is not so much one big, monster storm, but one damn thing after another…

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