Ice

Ice everywhere. Ice on the Chattahoochee where it flows from Coon Den Ridge;  ice on Lake Lanier;  ice down river at the Roswell Mill and Jones Bridge and on down toward Columbus. Ice on the State Capitol and on the freeways and on the side streets. Ice on the power lines and the trees, weighing them down, stopping traffic and chilling the spirits of the people. Ice blanketing cities and towns and countryside and covering the dome of Stone Mountain where Davis and Lee and Jackson peer into a nether sky as gray as sharks.

Seldom has there come ice so thick, seldom has there come cold so biting, to keep company this genteel Southern city that knows not how to cope.

The ice perdures.

And nothing moves.

Keeping Perspective

In some emails to family and friends I portrayed the recent Atlanta snowstorm as a big deal, and in fact it was pretty unusual. They don't get snow here every year, our white Christmas last month was the first since 1882, and the total annual snowfall is only 2.5" on average. So when more than that was predicted for Sunday night into Monday morning, people went nuts. Grocery stores sold out of bread and milk. Hardware and home improvement stores ran low on salt, shovels, and sleds. Liquor sales were up, naturally.

All eleven [!] of the area's snow plows hit the roads, but of course they couldn't cover thousands of miles of streets, and the next afternoon the snow changed to freezing rain. Mind you, this isn't pool-table-flat Kansas or Indiana or Florida. This is Atlanta -- there are real hills here because there are actual mountains in the next county. So when you combine the topography with snow, ice, and a few million people who don't know how to drive in these conditions, it creates a very interesting scene indeed.

As I probably would have done had I been in their shoes, my friends up north used the occasion to make fun of us. We're weather wimps, they said. We need to stop com- plaining, they said. Look at Boston getting dumped on with a couple feet of snow today [Jan. 12]. Did you see what New York City went through three weeks ago? Buffalo and Syracuse get this all the time, and you don't hear them whining, they said. 

They're right, of course ... but, although I nobly suffered the slings and arrows of this outrageous fortune -- not to mention my friends' disparaging remarks -- I also chose to reflect on the lessons one can learn from the situation.

 Keeping perspective is one of them. In the larger reality, this is no big deal. When I lived in Lake Bluff, Illinois -- on the shores of Lake Michigan and closer to Wisconsin than Chicago's Loop -- I didn't think much of driving to work in six or eight inches of snow with the temperature below zero. One week I lived there the high temperature the entire week was eight below! Yeah, it was pretty miserable, but you learn to deal with it. This week in Atlanta I just put on a sweater and "bundled in," as dey say in Nordakota.

The other lesson to take away from this little winter vignette is patience. In a few days nature will remove the snow and ice and we'll be back to normal, which in January is in the 40s for a daytime high.

So I'm being patient and reminding myself to keep perspective. After all, I could be in Fargo, dontcha' know.

New Year's Resolution

Jan. 2, 2011
On New Years Eve my friend Bob sent me an e-mail that was too long to post in the comment box. It relates to some of my viewpoints, and he's given me permission to reprint his message as a kind of "guest editorial." Here's what Bob wrote--

from    b******@*********.com
to      Stuart Showalter
date    Fri., Dec. 31, 2010 at 8:21 PM
subj    New Year's Resolution

Stuart,
Like you, I get really frustrated with people who blindly believe whatever they hear or read. Your blog's theme is "question everything and beware of answers," but a lot of people don't seem to question anything. They think they have all the answers already, or they assume that because it was said on cable news or a friend of a friend sent something to them by email, it really is true. These simpletons aren't thinking, and they mock anyone who shows signs of being intellectual. They ridicule experts, and complain of "spineless, elites with Ivy League educations and fat resumes that aren't based on hard work and free enterprise." (Sarah Palin actually said that on Fox News on Nov. 11, 2009.) And they're too dumb to realize that behind their backs they're being ridiculed by people who actually use their minds to think. It's the dumbing-down of America, you betcha!

These people are paranoid about the government. They've been brainwashed into thinking that Reagan was right when he said "government's not the solution, it's the problem" or however he said it, words to that effect. But if government is the problem, why do people accept their military retirement, GI Bill, Medicare and VA benefits? Do they not cash their Social Security checks? Why do they want better mail service and want it six days a week? What would we do without fire, police and EMT services? What about food and drug safety? National defense and homeland security? The state and federal court systems? National Weather Service, NASA and NOAA? National Institutes of Health and the CDC?  There are hundreds of valuable government programs at all levels, but the right wing zealots only want to cut programs and cut taxes and do away with practically everything except fighting wars and delivering the mail, and they'd probably like to privatize those things too.

I've got news for the Tea Partiers and libertarians of the world -- big government isn't bad; bad government is bad, no matter how big or small. Look at corruption in small town governments. Look at the history of cities like Chicago and Newark and LA. But the right wing crazies think smaller is better. Well it ain't necessarily so. And another thing, they're addicted to cutesy sayings and sound bites. Their insight doesn't extend any deeper than a phrase that would fit on a bumper sticker. Phrases like "How's that hope-y, change-y stuff workin' out for ya?" and "A nation of sheep creates a government of wolves" and "I want my country back." These are just substitutes for real thinking.

The angry airheads are addicted to simplistic mottos and simplistic answers. Term limits, for example. Term limits will solve everything! If we keep politicians from lingering in Washington or the state capital or city hall, we'll get back to what the Founding Fathers envisioned: "citizen legislators." Voila! Problem solved! But what the sound-bite crowd doesn't realize is that there are unintended consequences for every "simple" solution. For one thing, a politician who gets term-limited is just beginning to learn how to do the job, so he or she gets replaced by another neophyte. The one who leaves usually moves up to a higher office or becomes a lobbyist. This would mean that lobbyists will have even more power than ever if all the politicians are newbies. The issues are too complicated for amateurs, but that's what you'd have if term limits were in effect. Is that what we want?

And another problem: term limits are undemocratic. If the majority want an elected official to stay for a third or fourth or tenth term in office, wouldn't it be undemocratic to throw them out? You betcha! How's that will-of-the-majority thing workin' out for ya?

I'm going to stop now. This crap gets me too worked up. I'm going to adopt a New Year's resolution and tune out all politics for the year.

All the best for 2011,
Bob
P.S. Thank God it's not an election year!
_______

As you see, Bob does not suffer fools lightly. I can appreciate how he feels; I understand his frustration. I agree with most of it, if not perhaps how he worded it because he verges on anger, and anger is not an argument. Only logic will do. The problem is that logic seems to be out of fashion.Like Bob, I get really frustrated with people whose opinions are based on rumor, myth and hysteria. People like the "birthers," and the people who believed the lies about there being "death panels" in the health reform law. People like the superpatriot pictured here who want to "take the country back," but to where they aren't clear.

These folks' minds are made up, and they have no regard for facts and logic. (See my blogs back in October: "Opinions Are Not Facts" parts 1 and 2.)

Bob has a great idea, and I'm going to join him in making a New Year's resolution.

I, J. Stuart Showalter, hereby resolve --

• to tune out Sarah Palin, Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart, etc. for 2011;
• to "de-friend" people on Facebook whose blather irritates me;
• to pay no attention to "Cluster Fox"; and
• to ignore the crying jags and noisy political BS of John Boehner, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, etc.

I can't take it any more, and I refuse to let it continue to upset me. I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, but I thank Bob for the idea.

[By the way, Bob is not on any distribution list of mine, so don't bother going back to old emails to figure out who he is.]