It's snowing like mad here again- something like half a foot in the past 12 hours.

I've never really liked snow, being from the suburbs of Detroit it was always more of a nuisance. It would fall hard, covering cars and making the roads too slippery for safety, but rarely did it afford any days off from school or trips to the nearest sledding slope- there were no hills in Roseville, only parking lots.

I never really liked snow- because for me it meant trudging through the brown sludge that lingered long after the snowfall, and learning the terror of driving without Anti-lock Brakes before I even had my license. Now, though, as I sit in a second-story apartment overlooking Second Avenue, I realize that snow isn't always bad. Snow in Detroit means that the mousy branches of the trees across the street are wrapped in icicles and covered in snow, almost allowing one to forget that a woman was murdered in the apartment building behind them less than a week ago. Down the street, the tentative remains of the apartment building that burned down two weeks ago look like something from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. The snow swirls around the men that loiter outside of the local liquor store, and surely covers the bums that are still sleeping on park benches in Cass Park. The pristine white snow even covers the used condoms and rotten fruit that lay in the alley next to the apartment; the purity of the falling snow- that fleeting quality that will soon give way to the brown sludge- for an instant almost makes Detroit beautiful.