I'm hoping for a Tompten-like snow this winter, maybe just a couple of days' worth. We haven't had a really good snow for about seven years now. That could be blamed on global warming for want of any other reason.


The beauty of each individual snow flake is like the beauty of each individual fingerprint.
How can it be possible that there are no two alike?

I have a fact sheet about fingerprints from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Department of Justice, CJIS division, Clarksburg, WV 26306.

Whew! The information is overwhelming.

There are three boxes with the whorls of somebody's fingerprints. They must be some actual person's, right? I don't think I would like mine to be paraded out there as an example to the public, but a case of a dirty job, right?

There are loops and deltas and arches in each fingerprint.

"The lines between center of loop and delta must show."
"These lines running between deltas must be clear."
"Arches have no deltas."

Snow, at least in theory, is pure as it falls from the sky, or it used to be thought so. Not anymore, of course. We now know that it is undoubtedly polluted.

Fingerprints are made from the oil on the ever so slightly raised grooves on your fingertips. A lot of fingerprints all over your glass surfaces means a lot of grease, not elbow grease but oil exuded by the fingers. Remind me to ask a scientist about the evolutionary reason for this.

Only in the most abstract way could you metaphorically imagine fingerprints to be like snowflakes, no matter how softly they might touch the glass.

That would be like imagining a myriad of moths beating frantically against a light bulb or like the blur of snow trying to break through window glass in a snow storm. Or the glub glub of a fetal heartbeat on a monitor.


The touch of a velvet hand "like a lizard on a window pane" are words from a Beatles song.