A thunderous applause for the kindness of strangers

If you could have heard the thunder snow yesterday afternoon in Appleton, you’d know exactly what it meant.

That sound was God applauding his favorite kind of humans, the ordinary ones who rise to the challenge of the storms he sends their way.

Kind strangers showed up everywhere.

Two of them hooked their lines to a pickup truck and snowboarded right past my house. In the midst of their run, they spotted a car stuck in a snow bank. So, they hopped off their boards, hustled over and helped push the car out.

And, in case you’re wondering why a car would have ventured out ahead of the plows (which I don’t recommend), the driver of that particular car had been helping out a co-worker and I have it on good authority that he made it home safely and without further incident.

We had a whole relay team of snowblowers rolling through our neighborhood. My husband Vince fired ours up several times and made his way through sidewalks around our end of the block. The snow kept coming though, and our next-door neighbor, Carlo took his turn clearing the walks, including ours. Mike also hit us up on the west side of the house.

Wisconsin’s crazy weather tends to bring out the best in us.

Vince met an Uber driver who had pulled over to adjust his GPS. Turns out the poor man had agreed to drive someone to the Milwaukee airport and was determined to get complete the route in time.

Here’s to the snow plow operators, who had our streets clear in an impressive amount of time. Shout out, also, to the meteorologists who warned us all week that this mess was coming our way, which gave us time to adjust our plans.

Speaking of that, hats off to the school administrators who made the early call for a snow day today, and to churches and businesses who closed early, opened late and kept their employees and clients safe.

I hope you all stayed safe and warm and I’d love to hear your stories of kind strangers as well.

In celebration of all that good cheer, and in anticipation of tomorrow’s big day, please enjoy this clip of Upper Miss, my son and daughter in-law’s band. We got to see them perform during St. Patrick’s festivities Saturday in Stockholm, Wisconsin. I’ll write more about that on Wednesday.

Until then, good night and joy be with you all.