Our first snow storm of 2017 was beautiful. Blistery cold and quietly blowing across the fields and highways, this heavenly precipitation descended like a dove. Well not quite a dove, but at least like a blanket, which to borrow from Annie Dillard in An American Childhood, “held the houses down and the people in.” The routine warnings had been echoed on radio and television as newscasters and politicians took advantage of the face time to remind people to “stay off the road