November 19, 2018--Ice Storm

For a moment late last week it did feel as if the world was ending. It didn't, but perhaps we got a preview.

In the West, mainly in California, it felt that the entire state was being consumed in flames, with hundreds, perhaps thousands incinerated. It felt literally hellish. 

Some of the millennialist persuasion, always alert to signs of the End, claimed that it was in fact the (upper case) End and that the Antichrist was in our midst (someone other than Hillary Clinton this time) and the Rapture was imminent.

And in the East, not nearly as deadly or terrifying, the entire region was shut down in tri-state gridlock that was the result of a paralyzing snow and ice storm. Though "only" 6.4 measurable inches fell in New York City, a city that both never sleeps and prides itself in shrugging off 20-inch blizzards, this time, as the storm struck at rush hour, we more than blinked.

Commutes that typically take up to two barely endurable hours, on Thursday evening stretched from five to 10 hours. Yes, 10. There was a 20 car collision on the westbound side of the George Washington Bridge that took more than 12 hours to untangle. After an hour or two of frustration, sitting stalled in cars, commuters realized they were hopelessly stranded and that they would soon run out of gasoline and as a result would not have heat, they abandoned their cars and did who knows what or went who knows where.

Even in solid-as-a-rock, New York City, even in our shady West Village, half the trees either lost main branches or collapsed entirely under the weight of the ice and snow. There were cars that were abandoned near midnight on our block between Broadway and University Place. Trapped between fallen trees. At least they were only blocks from various subways that thankfully continued to run. If the subways had shut down without notice, I can't begin to imagine what would have happened. Even in the secular Big Apple I suspect that there would have been more than a few conversions to Evangelicalism.

Even if neither coast provided hints of a biblical ending it did offer more than a glimpse of how our country, the world is collapsing under the weight of overpopulation (rarely mentioned as it urgently should be), overconsumption, climate change, and the related collapse of infrastructure. 

Driving from Maine to our city home we got a full taste of the latter. 

I generally hate the FDR Drive which runs north-south along the East River, but because of the aggressive flow of traffic that didn't allow me to shift lanes we wound up swept onto it, forced to go south on the FDR at 125th Street. (Confession--I did not as yet have my NYC driving chops and for the city was driving too passively.) This last few miles took almost an hour of tense stop-and-go driving. Not helped by the lack of lighting in the half dozen tunnels one has to negotiate, not aided by white lines to help keep everyone in lane, and with a road surface that felt it was built and not maintained for a hundred years. Only a modest exaggeration.

"Worse than a third world country, what a way to welcome visitors to the city," I muttered to Rona, with whom, as a result of the driving tension, I was already spatting.

She grumbled something at me and that was our last exchange in 40 minutes of mounting aggravation.

In fact, they have been working on the FDR for almost as long as I have been driving (about 50 years) and rather than things improving the road surface it is getting worse and about to collapse entirely.

Two weeks later (actually, a couple of days after the storm with fallen trees and limbs still not removed from our street), we needed to take the car to the VW mechanic in Brooklyn for its annual inspection and assorted repairs. 

We took the Manhattan Bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn. As with the FDR, they have been working on the road surface for more than three decades and since traffic was slowed because of volume and potholes, we were able to catch closeup views of the road surface as we inched along. 

It is sad to report that in spite of all those years of effort in many places the potholes are so gouged out that one can see the East River flowing beneath the bridge.

Doing something about infrastructure is more than a subject for political oneupmanship. We will see that aspect of it played out as soon as the Democrats take control of the house. It is more about taking care of some of society's essential assets. What would happen to NYC, for example, to in fact the nation, if both the FDR and Manhattan Bridge collapsed? As I feel certain one day not too far from now they will. What will workers do if their commutes routinely require 4-5 hours each way? When every day is like last Thursday?

Extrapolate this across the country and, what with the incessant fires, perhaps the Preppers have it right and the End is approaching.

April 8, 2014--Preppers

Spending most of the year in Florida and Maine, it is not surprising to run into Preppers. People who believe that in one way or another, for one reason or another, the world will soon come to the end.

I mean END.

Some, following what they claim to be the vision of Isaiah see this to be part of the process that will lead to the Second Coming of Christ and then, after another millennium, the Apocalypse and Last Judgement. Others say the END will be the result of some cataclysmic environmental disaster or economic collapse--2008 times ten.

Even staid NASA last month financed a study that concluded the industrial world, because of financial inequality and environmental problems, within just decades will suffer "a precipitous collapse."

Up in Maine, for example, we hear from some about how climate change will make the Pine State about the only place that a super-heated environment will make habitable.

"So," Survivalist friends say, "Make sure you know your beans."

"What? Beans?" I asked the first time I heard this.

"Your beans. How to grow 'em and how to prepare 'em. They're the best form of protein, you know." And they added, "Be sure you have a gun and lots of ammo. A whole slew of your New York friends will be seeking you out and banging on your door once they know you got a cellar full of beans."

All Preppers say that no matter what happens, or why, one will need to be READY.

What they mean by READY varies and comes with different price tags. Inevitably not far behind there are those seeking ways to make a buck from people's concerns and fears. And thus there are even trade shows that appeal to the Prepper market. The New York Times the other day reported on one--the National Prepper & Survivalist Expo. It was held in Tulsa, a place that knows from natural disasters in a state that knows about religious fanaticism and mass terrorism.

Ray McCreary, the organizer said, "We tried to gear our event to the ordinary person who wants to be ready for any situation." Another words, you and I and not just the crazies. Prepping going mainstream.

One of the attendees at the expo, Alvin Jasckson, said, "People think that Preppers  . . . are guys in beards who live in bunkers and bury ammunition in their yards. But I went through Katrina, and I'm not crazy."

But in case you do want a bunker to hide or live in, at the expo they had some on display, along with filtered drinking straws that allow you to sort of safely drink wanter from muddy puddles and solar-powered generators ($4,299) and even "mass casualty bags" ($250). Fifteen bucks gets you vacuum packs of alligator jerky.

You can grow beans in all weather in the $50,000 self-heating greenhouse and for those seeking a prefab safe room, Staying Home Corporation offers a variety of tornado- and bulletproof Hide-Away shelters.

According to the Hide-Away specs--

Hide-Away shelters/safe rooms provide two levels of protection from armed intruders. The standard units (folding and stationary) are made of 1/4” thick steel to provide NIJ Level IIIA protection against hand guns and shotguns, which make up 90% of violent crimes, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. If you want protection from high caliber and armor piercing rounds, you can order the Ballistic Option, which uses military grade steel that is used in combat vehicles to provide NIJ Level III protection up to 7.62 NATO rounds (.308 caliber).

That should get the job done.

April 19, 2013--Two Americas

I don't know what to make of my America.

During the past 10 years I've read a lot of American history and am not naive about our Founders' commitment to democracy (in fact, most warned against democracy itself, fearing mob rule); who was included and who wasn't (in various ways women, slaves, the poor, and the propertyless); and, since then, the bumpy, incomplete road to securing rights for all.

I've come to prefer the Declaration of Independence--because of its inclusive vision--to the highly compromised Constitution.

But when 90 percent of the population support something as simple and commonsensical as expanding background checks to include people who buy guns at gun shows or via the Internet, when in spite of this the Senate votes it down, in a somewhat bipartisan way, I despair for my country.

What does representative democracy mean when something that has the support of almost everyone--including a clear majority of Republicans and even NRA members--is soundly defeated?

I can only conclude that it means that a central component of our tripartite government no longer represents us. It represents 7-9 percent of the population who, though ignorant of its original intentions, are fanatically devoted to protecting Second Amendment rights as absolute and sacred.

I know who these folks are. The dead-enders, the paranoid black helicopter crowd. I can look across my lawn here to see one--Dick Morris and his wife whose most recent instant book is The Black Helicopters Are Coming.

They preppers cling, yes they cling, to their assault weapons to defend themselves from their own government. When the black helicopters come for them, they'll be ready to fight back. This is really what it is all about--being prepared to fight the U.S. government. And, of course, to keep weapons manufacturers, who underwrite the worst of the NRA agenda, among the nation's most profitable businesses.

It's their country now, not mine.

If the Sandy Hook parents couldn't mobilize 60 votes in the Senate, what can I do?

I have never felt more powerless. Write letters? To whom? Tweet? Again, to whom? And to what purpose other than attempting to make myself feel better? About something like this, however, it's hard to fool myself that letters and few thousand dollars of campaign contributions will make any difference.

Which of the 46 senators who voted to defeat background checks and who are running for reelection (reelection being the meaning of their lives) is vulnerable? Perhaps only the three Senate Democrats. Wouldn't that be ironic--they'll get knocked off in spite of their cowardly vote and the Republicans as a result will retake control of the Upper House.

It may be close to time to concede that we do indeed live in two Americas. Not red or blue states. That's not fine-grained enough. Look at the 2012 electoral map by county and you will immediately see that by geographic mass almost all of this country is red. The blue parts are mainly concentrated around cities.

So perhaps like black folks who sought relief from segregation by moving north during Jim Crow days, like Eastern European immigrants who clustered on New York's Lower Eastside; and how for other reasons gay people flocked to relatively hospitable cities and, for career reasons, actors found their way to Hollywood and financiers to New York City, maybe it is time for those of us who do not want to have our lives defined by the NRA, weapons manufacturers, so-called right-to-lifers, and antievolutionists, perhaps its time to secede internally--by county, by city, not state as in 1861.

Let's leave to their own devices those fearfully scanning the skies for black helicopters or living in terror of other forms of armageddon. Let's consider decoupling ourselves from their narrative in favor of our own. Maybe it's finally time.