Winter friends — those who, contrary to all hedonic and circadian sense, love dark days and black ice — have been forwarding the story to me, triumphant, as if once and for all it’s been settled, the pointless, perennial battle of the seasons. Everyone just wants to feel better, I get it, but resisting their campaign is a twisted part of coping with the season. I spent the week exchanging snapshots with friends in Mississippi, their mutt cavorting in the snow-covered yard (look how cozy! Another friend asked if I didn’t find the cold and snowfall moody and melancholy, in a good way. It’s a case that the poets have been making for eons: “Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold,” Shakespeare wrote.

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Persons: Steven Kurutz’s, mutt cavorting, ”, Stu, Roz Chast’s, Shakespeare, what’s Locations: Mississippi, New