(The view from the balcony at Big Pink. The wind is starting to rise this morning as the capital braces for shock. Photo Socotra).
Alrighty, then. Yesterday was the day to get organized and maybe feel a grim, tingling sense of predestination. I have eggs, batteries, alcohol and a bad attitude all in place, ready to go.
Call it morbid, but I stayed up to the bitter end to see the Tigers disintegrate before the inexorable force that was the San Francisco Giants last night. I know Prince Fielder, the enormous Detroit First baseman, was a little short on his $214 million compensation package, since he went exactly one hit in fourteen World Series at-bats.
If he lost fifty or sixty pounds I wonder if he would have been caught at the plate in Game Two? Oh well. It is all history now.
We have been in panic mode here in Blue Arlington since last Friday. Governor MacDonald has declared a “state of emergency,” as have eight other governors. The rain is drumming down, dank and gray and chill. I have the back door to the balcony open to permit the steady pounding to echo through the unit.
The winds have not come up to any degree as yet, and there is plenty of time to put the hasp on the door should the gale threaten to rip the stout wooden structure from the steel jam.
The Federal Government is closed, and I knew that before deciding to stay up and watch the dismal last game of the Sweep in in Detroit.
I normally listen to streaming audio for NPR from places far away from here. I could do the morning commute traffic jams by heart without ever looking at a Highway Camera. It is more soothing to listen to places where the traffic is much lighter, though the hazards of the weather are real enough everywhere.
Depending on who is where in this sprawling nation, I sometimes choose Public Radio from the Square States, like Colorado or Wyoming, or spewing from the campus of Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, reporting the weather the pleasant voices report will impact “the Algoma District of Ontario” and all the way south to Flint.
This morning I just turned on the radio to listen to what is happening here.
I have a certain interest in that. I have thought through many of the bad things that could happen. The Electro Magnetic Pulse event that would fry all out computers is one, along with the crop-dusting airplane spreading nasty germs, or the suitcase nuke that has eluded someone else’s stockpile.
I don’t know what is most likely- but I think it inevitable that something bad will happen to the National Capital Region one of these days, and it might actually be today. When one deals with the man-made contingencies, the massive raw and implacable force of Nature is disconcertingly vast.
The real deal is the vagaries of weather. The Deracho wind took us unaware and un-alerted earlier this year, and wiped out the power for nearly a week. Hurricanes have flooded us out, and the Veteran’s Day snowfall buried us in two feet of heavy ice.
We don’t know quite what to make of it yet as Sandy is nearing. The rain has picked up from a blowing mist last night to something steady this morning, and we are not looking at landfall for the massive messy storm until later today, somewhere around Delaware to the Central New Jersey Coast.
We are only on the edge of things- I am not going to be optimistic just yet, but I am hoping that we will dodge the power outage and leave that to the DelMarVa peninsula.
I think the farm will be OK, if the rain does not weaken the root systems of the pine trees, and there is nothing to crash into the condos up here, so I am keeping my fingers crossed.
The upside to this is that the crisis will cause the campaigns to concentrate on looking supportive and Presidential in the face of disaster. Appearances are being cancelled, and one can only hope that the rhetoric about the storm will be tempered.
Ten inches of rain in the next day? Possible. Could it have an impact on the election? Worse, suppose there is no resolution on November 6th, and this awful process drags on and on?
One thing at a time. Mother Nature first, then the affairs of mankind.
Stupid Tigers. All hail the Giants, those bums.
(Let’s see if the rain can go sideways. More on that as it happens.)
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com