Last night's news said there was only six inches of snow in the town I
live next to, but that must've meant downtown, as up here on the hill,
judging by the neat even pile on the garden bench, we had eleven inches.
It rained in Seattle last night so a lot of theirs is now melted down, but
we had further snowfall only, & so today it's still a nice snowy world
round us. I really enjoyed bundling up & sitting on the porch watching
kids (& some adults) sliding down the steep road in front of our place.

I need to get to the post office but might put it off cuz of our worn
tires not apt to be maximally helpful.

In Seattle the police department threateningly forced people to stop
sliding down Queen Anne Hill. One kid responded by throwing a snowball &
the police did a complete shake-down search of his body as he laid over
the hood of a police car -- but as it was being televised they afterward
let him go with stern commands to go home & stay in his house. They
continued all night to harrass anyone who tried to do any sledding, like
seven police cars & a dozen cops waiting at the bottom of the hill to
harrass anyone who might slide down. It wasn't because of traffic as the
road was closed. At first they said it was because the city could be sued
for injuries (this was a lie; suits of that sort are summarily tossed out
of Seattle courts), but later they said it was because it would've gotten
dangerous if it had gone on until after dark (there is no such thing as
"dark" on brightly lit Queen Anne Hill, & when snowcovered it's brighter
still all night long). There WERE two injuries one from an ad hoc
mattress-sled crashing over someone, another from a young woman coming to
a sudden stop against a telephone pole. But hey, legs get broken skiiing
at lodges, & that's no reason to put an end to the ski industry either.
Seattle just has a wuss-government that cannot keep tabs of its
over-zealous police force; the one time the government TRIED to interfer
with police behavior, they responded vindictively by watching a man get
beaten to death on Fat Tuesday & didn't interfer, going ha-ha, see what
happens when we don't bust heads (there were resignations over that one at
least). The wussy government previously cancelled the millenium
celebration for the whole city because they worried terrorists might blow
up the ugly-ass space needle, & the police department's highwater mark of
behavior was in teargassing half the Capitol Hill neighborhood getting
people minding their own businesses in their own homes, & pepperspraying
young women sitting innocently in their car, all excused by the WTO
"riots" that only turned into riots after the police began acting up, &
even the cop who was caught on tape pepperspraying the girls got his job
back. And now they don't want kids & adults sliding down a hill in the
snow, for reasons that change every news hour as they flail around for a
reasonable one.

It would've been slightly more reasonable to stop the sliding down the
hillside in front of our house, since it connects at the bottom with an
in-use flat road, with greater possibility of a slide right into moving
vehicles, though that didn't happen even once. Fortunately our local cops
are either too lazy to act like storm troopers stopping a rare chance to
go sledding, OR they were out there on the hillsides with their own kids.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/