What a Mt. Vernon snowball fight showed this WordPress developer

It’s amazing what happens when you’re stuck.
When the snow finally stopped falling over the weekend, Baltimore’s neighborhoods got together, plows or not. Around Patterson Park, neighbors were shoveling together, sledding together and just out together. And we were supposed to be buried.
One of the most notable events sprang up in Mt. Vernon, where neighbors got together to fling the freshly-fallen snow at each other under the Washington Monument. According to a blog post, the seeds of the event were planted before the snow started falling, when WordPress developer Aaron Brazell posted the idea on Facebook. The interest grew immediately, so Brazell made a public Facebook event.
https://twitter.com/technosailor/status/691363769952276480
The storm cleared out by Sunday morning as forecast, so the sun was out for the start of the snowball fight at high noon. About 200 people showed up. What ensued is best captured in this video by Steve Celano:

To Brazell, it was about more than “the immense amount of snow being thrown about.” On Monday, he was still thinking about the diversity of the group.
From the blog post:

I watched (and participated) as blacks, whites, asians, hispanics, gays, straights, Muslims, Jews, and Christians all came together and had a blast. There was a Republican who dive bombed a Democrat with a snowball bigger than his head, while a gay man threw a well-positioned snowball into the back of a lesbian. And everyone loved it and didn’t care because we were having fun… together.

Read the full blog post for more of Brazell’s thoughts on communal events. About a month ago, Brazell also wrote thoughtfully about his restored faith in WordPress.