We have an affinity for snowflakes in Vermont. About this time every year we import a googol or two from Canada. We’ll be enchanted by our snowflakes for the next three months, but the flakes will outlast our enchantment, sticking around until April.
It was a Vermonter, Wilson Bentley, from over in Jericho, who took the first photographs of individual snowflakes in 1885. Mr. Bentley took 5,000 photos of snowflakes, and it was he who declared no two are alike, although when it comes to snowflakes, 5,000 is a small sample from which to draw conclusions.
It is about this time each year the Snowflake Harmony Project appears in City Hall Park in Burlington. A group of local businesses pays to have plastic snowflakes – three feet in diameter – distributed to 20 or 30 volunteer agencies – senior centers, youth clubs, social benefit groups. These groups decorate the snowflakes however they choose and the result is turned out for public display. It’s the sort of mainstream boosterism you might find in any small American city. On the other hand, my neighbor is an anthropologist and the more I talk to him, the more I see things like the Snowflake Harmony Project as a collection of cultural artifacts, a snapshot of the collective mind. If that’s true, here’s what we’re thinking:
The Vermont Italian Cultural Association invites you to celebrate. Their snowflake bears a filigree of dried pasta – rotini and farfalle – spray-painted gold and accompanied by photos of happy Italian Vermonters laughing, eating and singing. The snowflake reminds us Carnavale will be celebrated February 9, 2002.
The Intervale Foundation – named after the part of town where hippie gardeners tend their plots – decorated their snowflake with a wreath of herbs and clover.
Many of the organizations used their snowflakes to send holiday greetings or depict the kind of community they would like to see in Burlington. “Safer community” is the legend on a picture on the Champlain Elementary School’s snowflake. The picture shows a police officer with, yes indeed, a pot belly, slapping the cuffs on a burglar dressed in black, with a mask and a French beret, its tiny tassel standing erect. We all want a safer community, but failing that, at least give us well-dressed criminals.
One display celebrates the seven values of Kwanzaa, which requires a bit of artistic finesse on a six-pointed snowflake. The snowflake of the Lund Family Center wishes, among other things, for “a world free of unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases.” Those words were punctuated by packaged condoms; the words “herpes” and “crabs” hovered nearby.
The words “I am sorry” are prominently displayed on the snowflake from the YMCA, along with children’s artwork and holiday greetings. It’s not clear who is sorry and what they’re sorry for, but as there seems always to be a chronic failure to take responsibility when things go wrong, any apology is gratefully accepted.
The snowflake designed by Vermont Kids on the Block carries photos of puppets. The puppets speak for children whose faces are not seen. One says, “I dream of a world where others see me as a person, rather than a person in a wheelchair.”
Burlington is a refugee resettlement community and the snowflakes from Winooski middle and high schools have drawings of Vietnam and Bosnia, not pictures of war and deprivation, but green hills, sunshine and happy people. These pictures were not drawn by refugees, but by the children of refugees. They show a homeland the children have never seen and perhaps will never see.
Tomorrow is the solstice, the longest night of the year, a chance to sleep beneath a blanket of snowflakes and perchance to dream of a better, happier world for the year to come.
Let It Snow, Let It Snow
We have an affinity for snowflakes in Vermont. About this time every year we import a googol or two from Canada. We’ll be enchanted by our snowflakes for the next three months, but the flakes will outlast our enchantment, sticking around until April.
It was a Vermonter, Wilson Bentley, from over in Jericho, who took the first photographs of individual snowflakes in 1885. Mr. Bentley took 5,000 photos of snowflakes, and it was he who declared no two are alike, although when it comes to snowflakes, 5,000 is a small sample from which to draw conclusions.
It is about this time each year the Snowflake Harmony Project appears in City Hall Park in Burlington. A group of local businesses pays to have plastic snowflakes – three feet in diameter – distributed to 20 or 30 volunteer agencies – senior centers, youth clubs, social benefit groups. These groups decorate the snowflakes however they choose and the result is turned out for public display. It’s the sort of mainstream boosterism you might find in any small American city. On the other hand, my neighbor is an anthropologist and the more I talk to him, the more I see things like the Snowflake Harmony Project as a collection of cultural artifacts, a snapshot of the collective mind. If that’s true, here’s what we’re thinking:
The Vermont Italian Cultural Association invites you to celebrate. Their snowflake bears a filigree of dried pasta – rotini and farfalle – spray-painted gold and accompanied by photos of happy Italian Vermonters laughing, eating and singing. The snowflake reminds us Carnavale will be celebrated February 9, 2002.
The Intervale Foundation – named after the part of town where hippie gardeners tend their plots – decorated their snowflake with a wreath of herbs and clover.
Many of the organizations used their snowflakes to send holiday greetings or depict the kind of community they would like to see in Burlington. “Safer community” is the legend on a picture on the Champlain Elementary School’s snowflake. The picture shows a police officer with, yes indeed, a pot belly, slapping the cuffs on a burglar dressed in black, with a mask and a French beret, its tiny tassel standing erect. We all want a safer community, but failing that, at least give us well-dressed criminals.
One display celebrates the seven values of Kwanzaa, which requires a bit of artistic finesse on a six-pointed snowflake. The snowflake of the Lund Family Center wishes, among other things, for “a world free of unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases.” Those words were punctuated by packaged condoms; the words “herpes” and “crabs” hovered nearby.
The words “I am sorry” are prominently displayed on the snowflake from the YMCA, along with children’s artwork and holiday greetings. It’s not clear who is sorry and what they’re sorry for, but as there seems always to be a chronic failure to take responsibility when things go wrong, any apology is gratefully accepted.
The snowflake designed by Vermont Kids on the Block carries photos of puppets. The puppets speak for children whose faces are not seen. One says, “I dream of a world where others see me as a person, rather than a person in a wheelchair.”
Burlington is a refugee resettlement community and the snowflakes from Winooski middle and high schools have drawings of Vietnam and Bosnia, not pictures of war and deprivation, but green hills, sunshine and happy people. These pictures were not drawn by refugees, but by the children of refugees. They show a homeland the children have never seen and perhaps will never see.
Tomorrow is the solstice, the longest night of the year, a chance to sleep beneath a blanket of snowflakes and perchance to dream of a better, happier world for the year to come.