Late winter makeover

So why even live out here, you ask. Why remain in the nowheresville of the flyover zone, hours away from a city of even a few hundred thousand, and light years away from quality entertainment and any semblance of widespread curious, intellectual interaction?

There's so much to complain about when you live in these parts (as evidenced by previous entries), but despite all of that smugness born primarily of frustration (and genuine amusement), there are just as many good reasons for staying here, and Sunday morning presented a concrete reminder.

Following a day that we all spent outside in shirtsleeves digging into pre-spring chores, we awoke to find our late winter brown and gray landscape redecorated with a gentle snowfall that continued throughout the morning as dense, huge, fluffy flakes. Of course variable weather doesn't only exist in FO territory, but the wide open spaces and featureless land take on a singular beauty when frosted with a layer of white. There are places to stand out here where a whitened landscape stretches from horizon to horizon, intermittently broken only by fences, trees, scattered farms, and utility poles.

One of the allures of living in flyover land is the contrasts that can occur between everyday experiences and voyeuristic Internet traveling. This morning, I jump-cut from watching a silent, gentle snowfall from my back porch at 6 a.m. to a fascinating, plugged-in report on current urban branding strategies and "being" and pop-up brand spaces from trendwatching.com.

Some great stuff in the briefing about how traditional storefront retail operations and service-oriented businesses are transforming not only their brand images by becoming a part of their consumers' lifestyle but are changing the way their products and services are delivered.


As examples, check out the individual minipreneur for-rent cubicles at The Village Quill in NY and Nokia's cell phone "Silence Booth" that is installed at summer festivals. When I read and see stuff like this, my back porch seems even farther away from civilization.

But the snow is really nice out here . . . and I haven't even talked about the stars yet.