Musings on a blustery day
This is the great Baltimore blizzard of February 2010 as seen from the window of my daughter’s house on Toone Street in Canton. She reports that it’s difficult to get out to shovel because snow has piled up against front doors.
I have been listening to the New York City weather reports portraying a picture of weather as a calamity, turning the screws up on our anxiety, disaster-izing the natural course of events, whether climatic or political, it matters not; the news is cause for hyper-vigilance.
What, I wonder, are the consequences of this continual crying wolf? Does a society with frayed nerves make wise decisions? Does the heightening of predictable events ultimately make us less vigilant when dangers really do present themselves? Is Homeland Security’s color alert system somehow a metaphor for what the media have been doing all along—whipping up our emotions so that conflict and danger are like pollen in the air?
After all, blizzards have been happening periodically since man can collectively remember. Why should weather be reported as a threat? We cope, as we cope with thousands of other things, and I think we cope less well when our emotions have been played and dialed up. Seen in this light, the media play the role of the rascal who is always trying to rile people up against each other, telling exaggerated stories and tsk-tsking as we get upset and doubt each other.
Just thinking on a blustery day, with little else to do…—DM
So true. What the news media is not reporting is how neighbors are helping each other, spontaneous block parties breaking out, and generations are coming together to play board games and hunker down with each other to enjoy the break in routine. But, I guess that is boring news… no potential for hype!
Not to mention the great beauty of the climate. For example, the lovely blue light snow that seems to emit after firstfall or the way everything is transformed. I suppose that is deemed too sappy to mention, so it’s left up to poets and just plain folk. And yet if that blue light were to be explained scientifically it would be a great deal more enlightening than most news, wouldn’t it?—DM
Yes– the blue in snow, I’d love to know how that happens! I pay little attention to news but couldn’t ignore the stupidity of the headline “Storm Targets Nation’s Capitol” — weather as terrorism. Or just really really bad writing.
Brent, my daughter was in the merchant marine for many years, and her husband is a career merchant marine officer. They often chuckle about standing off the East Coast listening to some weather report saying, The storm passed safely out to sea! Nobody out at sea, of course, but us whales. When I workd for The Providence Journal one of its owners was Henry Sharpe of the tool and dye company. He gave a speech once and the headline said, Tool Head Speaks. He told the newsroom, I’ve been called many things in my life, but this tops the cake.—DM