Snow Day!!!!

For three weeks I’ve struggled to come up with a topic for our next blog.

Do I write about the dilemma I faced during the filming of 'Quality of Life'? An issue I so fittingly called, "to club or not to club" - when to put down the camera and pick up a drink. (My fellow Journalism and Psychological Trauma classmates may find that pun quite entertaining.)

Or my summer-long search for Yuca y anandos (squash and blueberries) in Cousin's market at Fifth and Lycoming Streets. It wasn't current, so I sat up late Sunday night hoping for some form of journalistic epiphany.

Both God and Mother Nature answered the call early Monday morning, when I woke up to half a foot of snow.

As a child, a snow day was the only day you had an excuse to sleep late. If you went to public or Catholic school, it was a no-brainer that your local news radio station would announce the phrase every child looked forward to hearing, "all public and parochial schools are closed."

Be that as it may, you didn't sleep late on snow days!

15 years later, I visit a neighborhood full of children, and none are outside playing in the snow.

"It's too cold to be outside child," says Neisie Sheppard of Franklin Street. Her children help as she quickly shovels a path in front of her home.

Sheppard says, a smaller child was hit by a car on Bristol Street earlier this winter, sliding down a mound of snow on a piece of cardboard.

As Sheppard and her children head inside to catch up on homework, Bethsaida and Veronica Morales are also indoors. Their idea of a snow day, involves getting a weekend task done early.

The sisters, along with their children, Lorriana, 15, Brianna, 13 and Victoria, 12, sit inside Salon Nuevo Estilo with pins and rollers in their hair. Lorriana, Bethsaida’s daughter, hopes her curls don’t blow out with the wind for her freshman dance at Edison-Fareira High School Thursday night.

Are chores, errands and other activities keeping children who should be enjoying the snow day, indoors? Has building snow men become an ancient art?

I certainly hope not.

I’m interested to see in the next 15 years, how the snow day is received by the coming generation. Hopefully, Web 3.0 won’t put an end to wet gloves and frozen cheeks.

By Cris Robinson, Kendra Howard and Kurtis Lee.
MURL, Group 22 - Hunting Park