Snow days

A tweet from Jenny this evening reminded me to blog a little more about the snow in Tennessee when we were there last week.

This wasn’t the first time we’d been in Nashville when it was snowing. A few years back a few flakes fell on New Year’s Day. Nothing really remarkable in many places, but even that elicited some surprise at the time.

This year there was significantly more snow, though still barely a grazing compared to what the UK has experienced over the past week, let alone a typical winter snowfall in Michigan. It was somewhat satisfying to see another society grinding to a halt in the face of a lot less snow, having been one of the many rolling my eyes when, during the snow in February 2009, the CBI and others moaned about Britain’s poor infrastructure and the billions of pounds lost to the economy. And then there was the way many less jaded than I were loving the snow. A reminder that an economy that can’t handle a few days of unplanned collective unwinding is at least as bad as one that insists on continuing whatever the weather.