Song Lyric of the Day (Classics IV, With an Appropriate Tune for Recent Turbulent Weather)

“You were the sunshine, baby, whenever you smiled
But I call you 'Stormy' today.”—James Cobb and Buddy Buie, “Stormy,” performed by Classics IV on their Mamas and Papas/Soul Train LP (1968)
 
The image accompanying this post, The Storm (1881), was created by American painter Edward Mitchell Bannister and hangs in the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum.

Quote of the Day (William Wordsworth, on a Man Out in a Storm)

“One who was suffering tumult in his soul,
Yet failed to seek the sure relief of prayer,
Went forth—his course surrendering to the care
Of the fierce wind, while mid-day lightnings prowl
Insidiously, untimely thunders growl;
While trees, dim-seen, in frenzied numbers, tear
The lingering remnant of their yellow hair,
And shivering wolves, surprised with darkness, howl
As if the sun were not.”—English Poet Laureate William Wordsworth (1770-1850), “Composed During a Storm,” in The Sonnets of William Wordsworth (1838)

With yesterday’s nor’easter—one that, with flash flooding in my area of New Jersey late morning, then a return engagement in the evening—I was grateful to be in my house, and dreading anything even remotely like the damage caused in early September by Hurricane Ida.

Quote of the Day (Theodore Roethke, on an Arriving Storm)

“Then a crack of thunder, and the black rain runs over us, over
The flat-roofed houses, coming down in gusts, beating
The walls, the slatted windows, driving
The last watcher indoors, moving the cardplayers closer
To their cards, their anisette.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), from “The Storm,” in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (1975)

Undoubtedly, something like the scenario that Roethke evokes will play out here in the Northeast in the next day or so as the remnants of Hurricane Ida blow through.

The image accompanying this post, “The Storm,” by American painter Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828–1901), was created in 1881 and now hangs in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

Song Lyric of the Day (George Strait, Anticipating the Current Texas State of Mind)

“Amarillo by morning
Up from San Antone
Everything that I've got
Is just what I've got on.” —Country music singer George Strait, “Amarillo By Morning,” written by Terry Stafford and Paul Fraser, covered by Strait and released on his LP Strait from the Heart (1982)

Just before I wrote this, I googled current weather conditions in Texas and found it was 32 degrees in San Antonio and 10 degrees in San Antonio. And that’s Fahrenheit, not Celsius.

Over the last few weeks, my neck of the woods, in northern New Jersey, has been pelted with one snowstorm after another. (Come to think of it, that’s exactly what’s happening right now.) But Texas is another matter. Nobody expected what they’re getting now, so nobody prepared for it.

So yesterday, we had front-page headlines from both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal about the deep freeze that has massively disrupted the state’s electricity grid, forcing many out of their homes in search of a warm place to stay. The mayor of Colorado City in the Lone Star State has even felt the need to resign, after constituents took serious offense to his Facebook post disclaiming the local government’s responsibility to help in the emergency, climaxing with the Darwinian suggestion that “Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish (sic)."

In the 1970s, many state drivers, disdaining speed limits as a means of energy conservation, sported the bumper sticker, “Drive 80 and freeze a Yankee.” How many ever dreamed that they themselves might freeze?

So, I guess Strait, singing the above lyric by Terry Stafford and Paul Fraser, anticipated the privation and even desperation produced by the current crisis. There’s one thing he didn’t expect, however: in this auto-centric state, the man in his song might not even be able to get on the road with all the traffic accidents. Who would ever expect the Texas Department of Transportation to issue a winter storm advisory to stay off the roads?

It is hard not to read all the news articles and social media chatter without seriously worrying about what is going on down there. So pray for Texans—very much including those on the road from “San Antone” to Amarillo.

Photo of the Day: Continual Damage From Isaias, Englewood NJ

A couple of days ago, I posted about the damage caused by the tropical storm Isaias in my hometown, Englewood NJ. The image I used—one of two large trees that came down in Depot Square Park—was startling enough.

But, in its own, less dramatic way, the image I chose for today has its own equally telling story. With the DPW having removed the downed trees by the end of Saturday, my eyes were ready to take in a scene familiar to me from nearly 60 years in this city.

Until, that is, I saw the wreckage from the wreckage: a picnic table bent and flattened; one park bench with its entire backing lopped off; and, as I photographed here, another bench rendered unfit in any way for sitting.

I realize that, with more than 300,000 power customers still in the dark this past Friday—and with many residents worrying about trees crushing their homes and downed wires near their homes—the problems of a park are minor by comparison.

But these problems are not without cost, and when the bills come—as they will—they will arrive at a most inopportune time. If citizens want the same kind of facilities that were available before the storm, they will have to be replaced and paid for. That will be harder to do amid a pandemic that has triggered the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and a consequent loss in employment and tax revenues at state and municipal levels.

When all is said and done, it will be interesting to see how much this destructive storm has cost us. Let’s hope that another doesn’t arrive soon, because we can ill afford it.

Photo of the Day: Storm Damage From Isaias

During the fierce couple of hours that the tropical storm Isaias blew through my area of Bergen County, NJ, yesterday, I braced myself as gale-force winds lashed the trees outside my house. I’m not sure when I saw the trees sway so helplessly.

Oddly enough, sunlight rather than diminishing winds was my first clue that the weather was settling down. I was thankful to see, after a quick circuit of my yard, that nothing more substantial than branches had come down.

It was not the same elsewhere. On an early morning walk this morning in my hometown of Englewood, I came upon the downed tree in this photo I took—one of two in Depot Square Park. A couple minutes away, the fallen trees were large enough to force the closure of several streets.

Then this afternoon, I had to drive carefully through intersections where the lights were not working—and several businesses (and, I hear, a number of homes) were still out of power, 24 hours after the storm.

There, but for the grace of God…

Photo of the Day: Teeming Stream

About 40 years ago, in order to build a housing project across the street from me, my town rechanneled and tamed a longtime floodplain, scooping out hundreds of the rocks and pebbles I had loved to step across as a child as it built the stream's surrounding walls higher and erected a fence. Ever since then, the current in that creek has become almost constantly placid. 

You can imagine my surprise Friday morning, then, on my way to the bus stop for my morning commute into New York, to see that same stream suddenly reverting to something like the churning brown torrent I recalled as a child. The wind from a storm had been enough to wake me overnight, but nothing brought home the change in the weather so much as the dark, violent waters I photographed in the hours after the palest of daybreaks.

Quote of the Day (Robert Benchley, on Thunderstorms)

“Just where any of us in the human race get off to adopt the Big Man attitude of ‘What is there to be afraid of?’ toward lightning is more than I can figure out. You would think that we knew how to stop it. You would think that no one but women and yellow dogs were ever hit by it and that no man in a turtle-neck sweater and three days’ beard on his chin would give it a second thought. I am sick of all this bravado about lightning and am definitely abandoning it herewith.”—American humorist Robert Benchley (1889-1945), “The Truth about Thunderstorms,” in The Best of Robert Benchley: 72 Timeless Stories of Wit, Wisdom and Whimsy (1983)

Quote of the Day (Richard Wilbur, on a March Storm)

“Beech leaves which might have clung

Parching for six weeks more

Were stripped by last night's gale

Which made so black a roar.”— American poet Richard Wilbur (1921-), “March,” in The Four Seasons: Poems, edited by J.D. McClatchy (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets edition, 2008)

Photo of the Day: Storm Damage

Three weeks after the snowstorm that tore up much of the East Coast on the Halloween weekend, most municipalities and counties are still dealing with the fallout in the form of down trees and limbs. I took the photo accompanying this post last weekend in Overpeck County Park, near where I live in Bergen County, N.J. If the park is like most everywhere else I’ve driven around here over the weekend, the debris in the park hasn’t been picked up yet.