Snow
Last night, my son had hockey practice until 10:20pm at night. As we drove home in blackness, the rain magically turned to gigantic snowflakes. Before making the final turn home, we stopped at Holiday to pick up a gallon of milk and a box of cereal. As we walked out of the store, we stared up into that wonderous dark sky that looked like what a spaceship would see as it travels the stars (yep, my education came from Star Trek). We spent time trying to catch as many snowflakes in our mouths as possible. As we looked up into the black night sky, the huge flakes combined with each other to form flakes an inch or more wide. After catching ten flakes in my mouth, I was covered with snow and noticed a funny taste in my mouth. I began to realize that my huge, pure snowflakes were probably not so pure. I don’t think I’d want to see a microscopic image of what I was consuming! It probably wouldn’t look this pure:
Photo from the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center
How can anyone look at a snowflake at not see the handiwork of a Creator? Speaking of snow, every child should read the book, Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. My son received it as a gift around age 10 and enjoyed it.
Publisher’s Weekly review: Azarian’s (A Farmer’s Alphabet) handsome woodcuts provide a homespun backdrop to Martin’s (Grandmother Bryant’s Pocket) brief biography of a farmboy born in 1865 on the Vermont snowbelt who never lost his fascination with snowflakes. Wilson A. Bentley spent 50 years pioneering the scientific study of ice crystals, and developed a technique of microphotography that allowed him to capture the hexagonal shapes and prove that no two snowflakes are alike. Martin conveys Bentley’s passion in lyrical language (”snow was as beautiful as butterflies, or apple blossoms”), and punctuates her text with frequent sidebars packed with intriguing tidbits of information (though readers may be confused by the two that explain Bentley’s solution of how to photograph the snowflakes). Hand-tinted with watercolors and firmly anchored in the rural 19th century, Azarian’s woodcuts evoke an era of sleighs and woodstoves, front porches and barn doors, and their bold black lines provide visual contrast to the delicate snowflakes that float airily in the sidebars. A trio of Bentley’s ground-breaking black-and-white photographs of snowflakes, along with a picture and quote from him about his love for his work, is the icing that tops off this attractive volume.
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