Tag: winter

Virtual Snow Day

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Last Wednesday, 22 January 2025, we had a rare snow day in South Carolina.  It turned into two (as of the time of writing) days of virtual/distance learning, so yours portly got to enjoy a couple of quiet days working from home (something that the schlubs at the federal government won’t get to do anymore—ha!).

When The Age of The Virus first began, I really welcomed virtual learning, mainly because I was experiencing an extreme level of burnout.  For the first time in my career, I felt like I could focus simply on teaching, instead of fulfilling all of the tedious little other requirements of the career.  Even if kids were tuning out online, they were doing that anyway during class, and it was a welcome reprieve from what was becoming a very overwhelming profession.

Now, I am far more skeptical about virtual learning.  A small minority of students thrive with the self-paced, independent, self-motivating nature of it; most students, however, struggle with that kind of latitude.

Aside from the damage distance learning can to do to young learners, however, there’s another, less tangible side effect:  the death of the snow day.

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Son of Sonnet: A Frozen Ballad

The Portly Politico4 Comments

It’s nearly the end of 2021, and while it’s technically winter, it’s been unseasonably warm here in South Carolina.  Indeed, “unseasonably” is a bit of a misnomer, and it is often hot and humid on Christmas (as it was this year).  I vividly remember playing football on New Year’s Day in shorts and a t-shirt.

Nevertheless, it’s winter, and January and February tend to be the coldest months here.  We’ve already had quite a bit of frosty weather (though no snow, which is rare as it is, but especially rare before January), so we’re fully into the wintry hygge.

A couple of weeks ago, regular contributor Son of Sonnet (subscribe to his SubscribeStar page here) put out an invitation for fans to submit themes for some new poems.  I proposed “Winter coziness“—’tis the season—and my Telegram buddy and fellow SoS fan WS responded “I was going to go dark, seasonal affective disorder.“

That led to my compromise theme:  “The dualism of winter: warm coziness and dark despair.”  I probably meant “duality” instead of “dualism,” but Son delivered “A Frozen Ballad,” combining the two aspects of winter into a ballad all about nostalgia, hope (and hopelessness), and trusting in God in our darkest moments.

The poem has received some positive feedback on Son’s Telegram page and on the esoteric Telegram chatroom Occam’s Razor Chat, which WS created as a space for escaping politics online, instead dedicating the chat to exploring the unusual, interesting, and supernatural.

Now, with Son’s blessing, I’d like to share “A Frozen Ballad” here:

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