As I've moved from the Nickel City to the Rubber City, I see how Ohio experiences winter differently from my home and native land. Snow here has an impermanence - within a few days it scrubbed away, what little that remains in corners and shadows is dust, caught in nooks and crannies, able to escape the triple cleaning action of wind, sun and rain.

Where I am from, snow is a defining characteristic of life for four months of the year. From its first flutterings on cold fall nights (A harbinger of the year's death) to the collected buildup of hundreds of thousands of cubic centimeters of shovelfuls scraped from sidewalks and driveways and highways and byways. It paints the landscape. The white that signals a blank page for children to imagine castles and angels also serves as an equalizer: The well manicured yard looks the same as the yard let fallow, and the feeling of digging your car out of a snowbank is a shared suffering. It whispers to us in the voice of swirling wind, We are the same, and we must all share in this labour.

There is one feeling that is present in both places: an appreciation for gathering. The warmth of comradeship is not the dry, electric heat but a warm, wet heat that leaves condensation on the windows, collecting on fingertips, pooling in the eaves. It is the kind of heat that one can only feel from a hot water radiator, steaming and ebbing its way to permeation, a heat that soaks into your skin and boils your bones to make the stock of conversation. Idly passing the time on a cold winter night in a warm public house with friends is the finest of time-wasters in a season full of time ready to be wasted.

The spirit of conversation, the spirits of the bar, and the ghosts of our collected experience form a trinity to watch over us as we all head off into the night, snow wetting out hair, stirring up memories.