The Winter of Our Discontent

Photo by Rick Stewart/Getty ImagesBuffalonians are a hardy stock and we do our best to meet the winter season with courage and resourcefulness. We comb our hair with snow shovels, gargle with rock salt, and tunnel out of our kitchens for periodic expeditions in search of gas and milk and cold beer at affordable prices. Yet even the most courageous among us winds up kneeling in surrender to lake effect snow. Winter in Buffalo is not something to be enjoyed or embraced, it is something one survives.

That winter survival instinct tends to heighten our emotional response to anything that gives us relief from the season of darkness. Like our forefathers before us, we faithfully pant through the…