Cold Cabbage

A crop of cold cabbage grows, or waits, in a stone-lined front yard garden. Which takes me back to 1977, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and a 2 minute video that stuck in memory, Cold Cows. It's a silent short, starring a cow, despairing of life in a cold pasture.

At the Environmental Humanities in a Changing World conference, yesterday and today at Princeton University, John Grim spoke of The Winter Dance, an American Indian ritual that uses music and dance to lift the malaise of late winter and "carry the people through".

That must be what I did a week ago to break a bad case of cabin fever, combining Brazilian music of Airto and Flora Purim with a dance style somewhere between Steve Martin and Steve Carell. Not sure it will become a widespread cultural tradition, but it works.

Sadly, cabbages and cows do not have this option for renewing the spirit.