#Symbolism in the pedestrian free#

Or was it simply that in the last few decades so little snow has fallen here that the younger generation has never learned to keep sidewalks clear? Perhaps they assumed that the snow would quickly melt, or that city hall would do it. Maybe they were so impressed with the unspoiled beauty of the snow, in an age when people are so worried about global warming, that they wanted to cherish it. Perhaps they, like my wife and children, first wanted to go sledding on the white sidewalks.

First of all because many of them probably do not have snow shovels, and it takes some time and effort to clean snow from a sidewalk with a broom. I understand that there could be all kinds of reasons why the Dutch did not line up immediately with shovels in hand. Within a few days, the sidewalks of my neighborhood turned into a slippery sheet of ice, rendering them impassable. It turns out that, here in Amersfoort, I am one of the few who took the effort to clear the sidewalk.

#Symbolism in the pedestrian free#

Michiganians are required to free their sidewalks of snow and ice the day that the snow falls. And since the little parcel of pavement before my house is nothing compared to the sixty-five foot driveway that I had to keep tidy in Michigan, I also took care of the next door neighbors’ sidewalks.īut I quickly realized that my neighborhood dealt with snow on the sidewalks differently than the inhabitants of Michigan, where nearly 100 inches of snow fall per year. I was ready to go for many years, the snow shovel that I had imported from Michigan had sat unemployed in the shed. In the last few weeks, when our streets and sidewalks were dusted with snow, I sprang up with snow shovel in hand, and went outside to clear the sidewalk. The Front Porch Republic article that Kennedy references is also soon to appear in the well-known Polish conservative magazine Fronda.Īmersfoort, The Netherlands. Editor’s note: This piece, by a well-known professor in the Netherlands, originally appeared in the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw (January 2, 2010).