Criticism and snowfall

It falls on the just and the unjust

I’m sitting on an old wooden pew, at a notched and weathered table. I’m by a window, lucky - overlooking a snowy downtown street. It’s snowing, again and I feel a sigh coming on. Snow is not something that usually depresses me, but this year, a combination of sickness, a busy toddler stuck indoors and more gray days than usual have made me grumble some about winter weather.

The pub in which I sit used to be the Catholic school, the same one which my daughter now attends, relocated to the other side of town. There’s an air about this pub which I love, a sense of remembering, of old things made new. I like the old signs and Irish music over staticky speakers and the photos of starched young people staring out of grayscale onto our warm wood-toned here-and-now. Depicted are rugby teams and elk hunts and polo clubs and nuns with fishing poles; there are bad hair cuts and pretty young girls and mustachioed baseball players in these photos. People just like you and I, who, many years ago, w…