December 23, 2004
Iceman
The iceman cameth last night, then beckoned a couple of inches of snow to cover himself. All this thwarting any pretense we might have about getting down our driveway and going anywhere today in the twenty degree (and falling) weather.
Deodar (reference previous OoNs) more or less welcomed him with drooping, if not open, arms. Among trees, she’d be a pretty slim sister, altogether appropriately designed to become a New York fashion model should the occasion arise.
I’m not sure what latent sexist virus might have made me presume the ice-bearer is masculine. Even though I am in good company with Eugene O’Neill, I checked a handy language book, anyhow, to find out that in Spanish, at least, ice is, indeed, masculine, but Iceland is feminine. Iceman wasn’t mentioned. There is, of course, the Ice Queen metaphor that sometimes gets into play, but I decided not to go there.
The English language seems to have survived reasonably well having discarded all that gender stuff, though I truly wish it hadn’t. Maybe if we’d somehow kept it, all those who get so lathered over about gender among us human beings and how we manage it, would have something else to think about. Anyhow, all this recalls for me rather fondly a somewhat dotty English teacher of mine who would frequently remind us that gender is for words and sex is for people.