awakeA couple of inches of snow has crippled the South. A state of emergency has been declared in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. And...I'm baffled.
With good reason.
March 13th was the 21st anniversary of 1993 "Storm of the Century." If you have no idea what I'm talking about, feel free to take time to follow the link and read the Wikipedia article. I was living on 16th Avenue South in Birmingham, and the city was hit with, depending on the location within the city, 13-17 inches of snow. Yes. That much. And it was bad. Because Birmingham is unaccustomed to getting snow, and it's certainly unaccustomed to that sort of snow. Roofs collapsed. Massive and longterm power outages. Etcetera.
Now...
Birmingham got only two inches of snow yesterday from "Leon" (these names aren't actually official, by the way). Atlanta got between .5-1.6 inches. Or thereabouts. This isn't especially impressive. No, not even for Alabama and Georgia. I lived there most of my life, and it happens. What was extraordinary wasn't the snow, it was the way people reacted to the snow. Near as I can tell, a combination of media/social media-fueled hysteria and poor judgment by — well, by lots of folks — created a man-made disaster, this "Snow Jam 2014." It wasn't the snow. Still, I'm seeing people online who lived through the 1993 storm act as if this truly is a remarkable snowfall, as if they've never seen the likes of it in all their lives.
So...I'm baffled. Here, we got a couple of inches in the night. Which I definitely could have lived without.
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Twelve days since I last left the House. Fourteen days is my record.
Yesterday almost felt like a work day. I dealt with some email. I signed the signature pages for the Centipede Press edition of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (photos behind the cut, below). I read back over everything I've written on the story that won't be called "Shutter." I didn't actually write.
Anyway, there you go. Try not to spend it all in one place.
Eyeing Bolivia,
Aunt Beast