I am increasingly convinced that the dreadful weather of North America -- with its endless parade of horribles, from floods to tornadoes to hurricanes, plays a much bigger role in the character of the American people than we are willing to admit. There is a ruthlessness to our weather that is almost savage; you need serious mental fortitude, and careful planning, just to survive. And there will always be at least a few times in each year when the weather will reach a crisis that will cut you off from almost everyone else, and test whether your house and your family are ready to survive. I think this constant testing has hardened Americans in a way that people who don't have to deal with this mess find very difficult to understand. I think it also contributes to our love for technology, and our unwillingness to live in accordance with nature, which has been the despair of so many intellectuals both here and abroad.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Come on Irene
Well, you may have seen that we had a spot of weather up here over the weekend. After dealing with an earthquake (!) earlier in the week, we got to deal with Hurricane Irene yesterday. Irene turned out not to be so bad as we had feared -- at least in D.C. She apparently caused great hardship in Richmond, Virginia Beach, and North Carolina. But we did spend a long night huddled down in the basement, listening to howling winds, and waiting for the power to go out at any moment. Fortunately, we did not suffer a power outage, for which I give a shout out to Dominion Power. And today was simply glorious -- with clear blue skies, almost no humidity, and just the perfect temperature. Tomorrow is supposed to be great as well.
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i think your suspicion is right about how much weather anxiety is constantly weighing on folks's minds. i did a bunch of reading news of the year, year by year over decades, from iran, and one of the things that struck me in that process was how frequently they had earthquakes that killed hundreds or thousands of people in a flash. systems of belief about everything--religion, government, commerce--would have to be so influenced by that.
ReplyDeletein her recent western-Kentucky appearance, Smartwife was telling us about the back-and-forth in alabama about requiring that mobile-home-park operators install bunkers where the residents could huddle in the event of severe weather. i can completely understand that suggestion, particularly given that the tv meteorologists around here tell people in trailers to literally leave their homes and either go to neighbors' brick-and-mortar houses or even to a ditch outside in the event of tornado warnings. by the same token, if that causes a lot of operators to shut down their mobile-home parks and you throw a bunch of people homeless, well, ...
anyway, point is, yes, weather's a big deal. shelter, food, companionship, freedom from pain ... i can speak for myself and say that, when i'm really bent out of shape over something, i usually can peel down through my layers of nuanced words and logical beefs and find some version of one of those big-ticket worries at the core.
glad you all were safe.
I should also mention that in the D.C. area, at least, the forecasts were remarkably accurate. The storm followed pretty much exactly the path expected, and the winds were rains were almost precisely what had been predicted. So I'm quite happy with the weather folk today.
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