Another 52 Weeks — #2
Some would call it a winter wonderland; I just think it's cold...
Growing up in Texas, I used to say we had three seasons: Early summer, mid-summer, and late summer. It was a joke, but also not much of a stretch.
My family’s house on 22nd Avenue in Texas City was only a mile from the Gulf of Mexico, and I saw snow only once while living in my childhood home. With the exception of holiday road trips, the only “Winter Wonderland” I saw was on television.
In 1993, at age 28, I was working for Southern Newspapers Inc. and was promoted to managing editor of the 7,000-circulation daily in Reidsville, N.C., a small tobacco and textiles community near the Virginia border. My time in Reidsville was a life-altering period in my life for many reasons, some of which I’ll go into in an essay next week, and also the first time I experienced a true four-season calendar.
Summer wasn’t bad, especially when compared to the hellish humidity of the Greater Houston area in August. At the same time, I also learned quickly that spring and fall, as beautiful as they are, are not kind to those of us who are allergic to the great outdoors.
And then there was winter. North Carolina’s winters, especially away from the mountains, generally are nothing compared to what the snowbirds of the upper Midwest or the Northeast experience. But it was colder than I expected, and I admit I wasn’t prepared.
The newspaper’s bookkeeper, Bruce Webb, was a colorful Reidsville native who tried to convince me that pork barbeque was tastier than beef (nope, didn’t happen) and shared my befuddlement at folks who listened to NASCAR races on AM radio. He also fired off memorable one-liners that I still recall and use, one of which was, “Winter here can be mild, or it can be colder than a well digger’s ass. You just never know.”
Truer words were never spoken.
So far, the winter of 2025 has left well diggers in search of Chapstick here in Northern Virginia. Since last Saturday, we’ve had our largest snowstorm in three years and the thermometer has climbed above freezing for any length of time only once. We had more snow last night, and another week or more of bitter cold remains in the forecast.
Griping about the cold may seem trivial or insensitive given the tragic devastation that has taken place in California this week. But the extreme weather incidents we are facing across the nation and world should also serve as a wake-up call and a reminder of what we are continuing to do to our environment.
This is my unsolicited PSA for this second Saturday of January: We have only one Earth, and we have to do a better job of taking care of it.
Now, moving on to the rest of the week’s photos:
Photo Book Coming Soon
“Pandemic Summer in Times Square,” the last image in this installment of “Another 52 Weeks,” is one of more than 2,000 images I shot while walking through four cities during the first year of COVID. Now, I’m compiling 70 of those images into my first-ever photography book that looks back at those uncertain, uneasy 12 months.
The book, Keep Your Distance: Walking Through the First Year of COVID, features photos taken in New York, Richmond, Va., Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Va., from March 2020 to March 2021, a period in which I walked almost 4,000 miles.
Here is the cover:
Now in the final stages of production, I hope to take pre-orders for the book in the next couple of weeks. Incentives are planned for those who upgrade from a free to an annual or founding member subscription. Also, this March, I will start a monthly look back at the pandemic’s first year with additional images here on Substack.
I hope you will consider supporting this project.
"Staying Afloat." Lovely and how apropos of the times.