There was snow on the mountains at the beginning of the week when this was taken, you can see it in the distance; it's gone now. 

Francois Villon's poem "Ballade des dames du temps jadis"of course is really asking where the beautiful women have all gone.  The refrain about where the snows of yesteryear have gone is just a substitute, a stand-in, like Pete Seeger's where have all the flowers gone, long time passing, preferably as sung by Marlene Dietrich.

I've been corresponding lately with someone who reminded me about the snows of yesteryear in Ohio.  I have not been back in a very long time to see, but I do remember the winters there and yes, it could be pretty, for a while.  In this case, however, I suppose you could say that it is not just the snow from the old days that is gone, but how much else is gone with it.  You associate snow with a sense of loss because loss is a cold business.   I think about going back but I'm told The Unionville Tavern was sold and turned into a martini lounge and then closed and now it is falling into disrepair.  If you know what old white clapboard looks like in the snow in weak winter light against a gray sky, seen through the branches of old bare shade trees then you can appreciate why I hesitate at the same time I feel like I might want to see that again.  Few things are that bleak and still beautiful.  Black and white photography would not do it justice.  Neither would color. 

Lately everyone's been gone or off going to places, Greg to Palm Springs, Carlos to Atlanta, Eduardo to Cuba, my Montreal friends to Cuba too, Sophia to India, then Paris, Justin to Boston and back again to New York in time for lunch.  Philip's still in Russia.  I have not gone anywhere for a while now.  My choice.  Nowhere except Monday night when I went with Dave to the Valley, out past Woodland Hills, past Reseda, past Encino, look at the mountains in the picture, go out there and turn left and go off the screen for a million miles.  Another world.  Not Cuba or India, I admit, but definitely another world, trust me.  "Where are we exactly?" I ask a friend of Dave's when we finally get there.
 
"The Valley," the lady replies, as if to be more specific would be really complicated.