![](\"http:\/\/dowbrigade.com\/images\/neaster.jpg\")
Another Nor ‘easter lashes the recently unwrapped windows
\n and assaults our apartment from all sides. It’s hard not to allow the
\n weather to affect one’s mood, especially when it is nasty. It is sometimes
\n hard to remember that nature is always beautiful and awesome in its majesty,
\n and that any day you can get out of bed and stand on two good legs and
\n see the world with two god eyes, is a great day,\t <\/p>\n
Today, again, was rainy and windy and so cold we could
\n see our breath as we hustled around town, head down and bundled up against
\n the elements. All day there was a driving drizzle of a temperature dropping
\n dangerously close to that of sleet, which has with the coming of night
\n grown into a howling tempest. A chorus of local channel Cassandras wail
\n on about Ocean-front flooding, astronomical high tides, isolated blackouts.<\/p>\n
Nor’easters, the typical vicious storms that attack
\n the East Coast three or four times a winter, are more usual, although
\n no more welcome, in January, February or even March. Not in May,
\n two days before Memorial Day Weekend, official start to the summer season,
\n when they arrive like alien invaders from a cold and distant planet. <\/p>\n
Distinguished
\n by their high winds and copious precipitation, they get their name
\n from the prevailing wind direction and track of the storm. There are
\n two
\n kinds of Nor’Easters, fast ones and slow ones, and the slow ones are
\n the worst
\n because they just park themselves off the Massachusetts coast, beyond
\n Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, over the Georges Bank and suck up
\n ocean water which they dump in a variety of formats all over New England.<\/p>\n
The numbers, for those who think that way, are scarier
\n than the recent Red Sox slump. Today set an all-time record for lowest
\n high temperature – 45 degrees. It has rained on 20 of 25 days so far
\n in May, and barring a sudden heat wave will go down as the coldest May
\n in Boston since they started keeping track.<\/p>\n
So it is partly as an exercise in creativity, and partly
\n as a defense against depression, that we would like to essay a few reasons
\n that the present inclement weather can be seen as a GOOD thing, or at
\n least not the end of the world.<\/p>\n
First, there is the Einsteinian rationalization. Everything
\n is relative. After a couple of weeks in January in which
\n a glass of ice in direct sunlight wouldn’t melt a drop, 45 degrees, even
\n 35 (what it is now with the wind chill), can seem tropical. We
\n have had students from Siberia, out on the frozen Charles River in their
\n shirtsleeves, ice fishing (vodka was involved, and we didn’t catch anything).It’s
\n all in the mind.<\/p>\n
Then there is the "lots of people have it worse" line
\n of reasoning. If we working stiffs are having a hard time, think
\n what it must be like to be homeless in this weather? Drenched and shivering, ducking under bridges and into doorways just looking for someplace warm and dry. <\/p>\n
And even among those
\n with a roof over their heads, some poor people can’t afford heat, and
\n sit, shivering in their living rooms. People like the Dowbrigade,
\n who is so hard-headed and cheap that he refused to buy more heating oil
\n when he ran out in April, right before the coldest May on record, on the theory that “summer is right around the corner” and “the price is sure to go down before next<\/i> winter.” As our dear mother would say, “And this is what an Ivy League education gets you?”<\/p>\n
Moving on down the list, there is the Garden Factor
\n to take into account. In fact, since we planted our flowers and vegetables
\n six weeks ago, in mid-April, we haven’t had to water them once. If April
\n showers bring May flowers, the May deluge should make our plants huge
\n – if they don’t drown.<\/p>\n
Also, we suppose we should be thankful that this storm
\n DID arrive late. According to one local weathercaster, if this
\n had been a more typical Nor ‘easter in the depths of winter, it would
\n have dumped over FOUR FEET of snow on our lucky asses.<\/p>\n
Finally, we can use this Sirens song of Mother Nature
\n (the window panes are rattling in their frames in a most unsettling way)
\n as motivation. Motivation, that is, to finally move away from this
\n benighted metrological cesspool, somewhere the sun makes at least an
\n occasional appearance and human beings are not constantly spit on and
\n laughed at by the climate itself<\/p>\n
Oh, and to remind us not to let the weather affect our
\n mood…..<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another Nor ‘easter lashes the recently unwrapped windows and assaults our apartment from all sides. It’s hard not to allow the weather to affect one’s mood, especially when it is nasty. It is sometimes hard to remember that nature is … Continue reading