The area's first large snowstorm in nearly three years was a bit like opera: People loved or hated it. They embraced or they endured it. But rare was the person with no opinion about the upheaval and the beauty brought by yesterday's unusual visitation of weather.

In the flakes that showered his Silver Spring driveway, construction worker and El Salvador native Elmer Aparicio saw "the hand of God."

Sherry Rexrode saw 65 miles of treacherous road between her home near Gettysburg, Pa., and her Ellicott City job.

In Annapolis, Roy Zaidenberg, a St. John's College sophomore, used a snow-covered Acura as a canvas on which to write for his girlfriend: "Roy loves Libby," with a heart for "loves." And in Elkridge, 2-year-old Mack Henningsen wept for his mittens, lost in a snowbank.

Now that was a "snow emergency," said his dad, Michael A. Henningsen.

The snow stopped classes, a ballet and the annual lighting of the Washington Monument in Baltimore. But it couldn't keep retired couple Jerry and Ed Haines from their hair appointments at Venus & Co. Salon and Spa in Westminster, where 6 inches of snow fell.

"We're going to Ocean City tomorrow if we can get there, so I had to have my hair done," said Jerry Haines.

Salon owner Venus Reis was open for business because she knows that for some people, a snowstorm is much easier to take than a bad hair day.

"I've had people cancel doctor appointments to make their hair appointment," Reis said.

At the main gate of the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus, scores of students frolicked in the falling snow, hurling snowballs and playing touch football on the same front lawn that draws sunbathers in the spring. Classes were canceled, giving sophomore Seth Pitman, from Pensacola, Fla., his first sight of snow in 15 years.

'This is amazing'

"I just put some layers together," he said of his improvised snow gear as he leaned against the brick gate facing North Charles Street. "This is amazing."

Ann Cunningham, a postal clerk who usually carpools from West Baltimore to Linthicum, had a different view. Yesterday afternoon, when a co-worker's car got stuck in Essex, Cunningham caught a ride downtown and then tried vainly to flag a cab home.

"This is my worst day ever," she said as she slogged through a plowed bank of snow and icy water, flexing her frozen fingers and shaking water from a pair of fashionable lace-up boots.

"I have no gloves, no hat. I'd rather be caught in the rain because then I wouldn't be as cold."

Government buildings across the region were locked tight, but at U.S. District Court in Baltimore, the show went on in a three-day hearing in Sun Microsystems Inc.'s private antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz had warned attorneys in the case Wednesday that the last day of the hearing would go on as scheduled, snow or no snow.

And it did, even as every other courtroom in the building stayed dark. Most of the roughly 50 attorneys taking part in the case were from outside Baltimore and already had camped out for the week at nearby hotels. Snow gear was noticeably lacking. They showed up in court in dark suits and ties and wingtips - not a boot in sight.

Academy spirit

At the Naval Academy in Annapolis, bedsheets spray-painted "Beat Army!" for tomorrow's football game at Giants Stadium in New Jersey hung limply from dormitory windows, soaked by melting snow. And the statue of Tecumseh, typically repainted in wild colors before every Army-Navy game, hid under a blue tarp.

The academy vowed to go forward with its game pep rally at Farragut Field last night. There would be a drum and bugle corps, cheerleaders and a bonfire.

But many events didn't go on. Anne Brodsky, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County who has studied the resilience of women in Afghanistan, was scheduled to give a talk last night about her work - but the talk was canceled. The unexpected day off gave her a chance to reflect on how the disruption caused by a Baltimore snowstorm contrasts with the chronic chaos that governs the everyday lives of the women she has studied.

"A lot of us here are lucky enough to have shelter and food and jobs and peace and relative security," Brodsky said. "A lot of this is going to be cleared up in a couple of hours. The disruption of life [in Afghanistan] has been going on for 24 years now."

'Old hat to us'

Some took advantage of the region's collective fear of snow. At a Kohl's department store in Severna Park, Elizabeth Zimmermann, 32, of Pasadena, said she was shopping for Christmas presents for her niece and brother. She said snowy days are the best times to shop, because many Marylanders are afraid to venture out. Not Zimmermann.

"My Buick's original home was Canada, and I was born in Wisconsin, so we know how to get around," said Zimmermann, who had the day off from her public relations job at Fort Meade. "This is old hat to us."

But it was wondrous for Aparicio, the construction worker from El Salvador. Shoveling his driveway, the 29-year-old father raised his hands and looked up into the sky as the snow fell.

"We don't have this in El Salvador, just rain and sun," he said. When it snows, "we do a bunch of pictures to send to my country."

"The God of creation did this."

Sun staff writers Lynn Anderson, Ellie Baublitz, Larry Carson, Amanda J. Crawford, Gail Gibson, Liz F. Kay, Ivan Penn, Ariel Sabar, Jamie Stiehm and Kimberly A.C. Wilson contributed to this article.