Grateful for ‘utter beauty’ of this column-writing chance

The symmetry was all too fitting. I made a stop not long ago at the SUNY Buffalo State office of Stephen Vermette, who teaches meteorology and climatology. For the past three winters, he’s also handled an informal role of particular meaning in Upstate New York.

Vermette, in a way not quite like anyone before him, has served as the caretaker of the Golden Snowball. Yet he intends to pass it on within the next few weeks, at a little ceremony still in the planning stages:

This spring – for the first time since 2018 – that snowfall trophy is headed back to Syracuse.

As for me, after nine years away, so am I.

When I say I’ve been away, what I’m talking about is what I really learned to do in this city: Writing columns. In 2016, after 27 years with The Post-Standard and Syracuse.com, I became a columnist with The Buffalo News. Since 2021, I’ve been teaching at Le Moyne College — a place I hope to stay for many years — while I also continued with my column for The News.

A week ago, I retired from that position and shifted into this one. With this piece, I am again a working columnist in Syracuse. It’s been 51 years since I began my first role as a paid journalist, all that time spent in the two regions that have shaped everything about me, and really the only places where I’ve ever lived: Central and Western New York.

The utter beauty of what’s happening right now is how that whole lifetime is coming together in one job.

I’m joining The Central Current, this new journalism nonprofit news site. There is no paywall. Click on any piece I write, and it will open for you, without barriers. I love the feeling of the newsroom here, and my position is essentially as an Upstate columnist, meaning that while my work will be Syracuse-centered, I will also be free to roam from Oswego to Cooperstown, from Buffalo and Niagara Falls to Dunkirk …

Which is where I was born, in Chautauqua grape country, 65 years ago.

Last week, I wrote a farewell piece in The Buffalo News upon retiring from that extraordinary job in the community that shaped my parents, a message of gratitude for wonderful colleagues and especially for soulful and loyal readers. Let me say immediately that I hope those Western New York readers stick with me here, while I offer this greeting with appreciation to the great readers of Syracuse, the city where we raised our children and where for decades my wife Nora taught school:

Years ago, we found an enduring Central New York welcome when we were young, not so far out of college. You supported what I did at The Post-Standard when I was a general assignment reporter, when I switched to being a sports columnist during the era of “The Cuse is in the House” and finally when I began writing “cityside” columns about the quiet magnitude of everyday lives, the role that remains the great passion of my life.

You shared my understanding of what this work could be. Whether it was through emails or beautifully handwritten letters or conversations in Green Hills or at some 5k race, you offered countless thoughts and ideas about stories you sensed carried deep meaning.

With your help, I wrote columns in Syracuse until late 2015, a short time before I began similar work in Buffalo. Even now, I’ll hear from longtime readers in Central New York, describing some moment or event and saying: “If you were here, this is a tale you’d love to write.”

All of that is true, on an aching level. It’s impossible to count the number of times I was told of something in Syracuse – the passing of someone I loved or admired, or some quiet account of courage, vision or perseverance – and thought:

These are stories I wish I had a chance to tell.

In a way that seems beyond belief, I’ll have that opportunity again.

All of this happened once I reached logical retirement age at The Buffalo News, and I received an offer I didn’t expect from The Central Current, this startup of remarkable potential in Syracuse. It arrived at the exact moment when I was feeling — for many reasons — an increasing imperative to be more and more present with my family, and to stop spending so much of my life on the Thruway.

I look forward to so much that’s coming, with new colleagues. I appreciate the great work being done by so many people I love at both Syracuse.com and The Buffalo News, and it makes me feel, well, almost young again to remain part of that same Upstate newspaper universe while helping to carve out something so new in local journalism at the Current.

This lifetime of regional circles came together, and I’m returning to Central New York, just like the Golden Snowball.

That’s kind of a joke — but then again, not exactly.

I started writing about the Snowball almost 25 years ago. I was told of how in the 1970s, amid some of the worst snowstorms in Upstate history, a band of imaginative National Weather Service meteorologists came up with the idea of presenting a hand-fashioned trophy to New York’s snowiest large city at the end of each winter, behind a simple belief:

What could so easily seem a burden was also a stunning wonder.

The annual contest — typically won by Syracuse — soon petered out. But I located the wistful founders and wrote a piece about their original vision, and their memories inspired Rosanne Anthony of the A-1 Trophy shop in Syracuse to create a new trophy, built around a glittering snow-flecked “snowball.”

For years, it sat on a shelf at Syracuse City Hall, until Mayor Ben Walsh began sharing it with other cities that had won. When former Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said no thanks, seeing the trophy as a detriment to the city’s reputation, a stunned Vermette stepped in to provide an enthusiastic welcome.

He loves big snow. Before this old-school winter returned not only statewide but national snowfall supremacy to Syracuse, Buffalo held the Golden Snowball for four of the last six years, including the last three in a row.

Vermette gave the trophy a whole new profile. He brought it to museums and festivals and other uniquely local celebrations, believing in the idea that whatever community earns the Snowball ought to remember what it means to pull together amid struggle, while honestly and collectively taking on the many challenges that might result.

I’ve got to tell you: That’s a pretty good mission statement, for a columnist.

So here I am, a little astounded at the way things are playing out, eager to reconnect with faithful readers. The truth is I need you, more than ever. Central Current is still a small operation. It’s part of a nationwide movement, but also a precious local experiment — a nonprofit site for news and reflection sustained mainly by community support and passion.

Typically, I’ll be writing at least a column a week, hopefully about people or events of communal meaning. If one of those pieces moves you or inspires memory or contemplation, you’ll be doing me a giant favor if you share it. If you need me to speak about our mission — and storytelling — for your community group or book club or civic organization, I’m happy to show up.

Journalism is changing swiftly. At Dunkirk’s Evening Observer, where I held my first job in an old building on East Second Street, cutting and pasting was not a computer function, but involved a pair of scissors. I later joined a small alternative weekly in Rochester, City Newspaper, where an editor named Mary Anna Towler reinforced my sense of my own voice, and had a to-this-day impact on how I see my role in journalism.

There is a close-the-circle beauty, then, to the alternative notion of the all-digital Central Current as my probable last stop.

I left our newsroom today and just stood in downtown Syracuse for a few moments on a spring afternoon, on this main thoroughfare with the wonderful name of Salina Street. The blue hills of Onondaga rose above the southern horizon, while a warm April sun illuminated landmarks put up by such master architects as Joseph Lyman Silsbee, a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright.

For a moment, I let all the gratitude sink in – for the wonder of brilliant green days after long winters, for everyone I love around this town, for the countless ways this place has changed my life.

I hope you feel it in everything I write, now that I’m back.