Now They Want to Tell Us How to Run Our Air Conditioners

There are times when I really wonder how the “Ruling Class” looks at the rest of us in the “Country Class”.  When I think about the ridiculous number of regulations that have been imposed upon the American people by our governing agents, I sense a genuine lack of respect for the people by the rulers.  Or, in plain English, they must think that we are dumber than a box of rocks.  Maybe I am old-fashioned, or just being contrary, but I really don’t think that how much water my toilet uses per flush needs to be regulated by state and federal agencies.  I’m just saying . . .

The most recent example of government over reach was reported recently by Channel 5 News in Los Angeles, out in “the land of fruits and nuts.”   According to the news report, “Energy Star”, a program administered by the US Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, that is supposed to advise us dummies of how to save energy, save money and improve the environment.  (Read “Save the Planet!”)

Am I the only one who finds a magnificent irony in ANY federal agency providing information on saving money???  Am I the only one who thinks it is absurd that the US Department of Energy has never produce a single joule of energy for the American people?  Does anyone else ever wonder about how much authority we have given unelected bureaucrats in the EPA?

But I digress.  Now, this latest suggestion from our “betters” is that we should set our air conditioning thermostats at 78 degrees when we are at home and to turn them up to 85 degrees when we leave the house and set them at 82 degrees when we go to bed at night. Okay. Yeah, right.

There was a time when my house was 78 degrees when I was in the house.  It was before we had air conditioning.  I lived in very few houses that were comfortable in the summer without air conditioning.  We’d have a fan or two in every room, but all they did was move hot air.  Being in the house only offered relief from being out in the sun.  I don’t really want to live that way again.

And, the thought of sleeping in a room that is 80 degrees is almost more than I care to imagine.  I sleep better in cooler air.  It has been that way all of my life.  I remember sleeping out in the yard as a kid because it was too hot to sleep in the house.  I’m too old to sleep on the ground now and packing a cot in and out of the house every night and morning does not sound inviting either.  And, I am sure that my neighbors would not appreciate me sleeping the yard.  Along the street.  In South Bethlehem.  Just sayin’.

As miserably uncomfortable as many of us would find these temperatures, do we really think that the wonks at Energy Star keep their houses this hot in the summer?  I am pretty sure that the people who made these recommendations don’t follow them.  After all, they are our “betters”, aren’t they?

There’s a couple of things about this news article that bother me.  First, why in the name of bright, sunny days is our federal government wasting money on “Energy Star” when we are $25 trillion dollars in debt?  Where in the Constitution is authorization for this Energy Star program?  Why is this money being wasted?

It also annoys me that anybody would have the audacity to tell anyone else how warm or how cool to keep their house.  Where in the world do people get the idea that they have the right to tell other people how to live?  Why would anyone want to tell someone else how to live?  I simply don’t understand that – I have no point of reference for wanting to order another free, sovereign adult around.  It amazes me that anyone would want to.

I think what annoys me the most about this, is that our government has programs designed for people to tell other people how to live their lives.  I mean, seriously.  How have we gotten so far off track that we have government wonks running around telling how high we should set our air conditioners, how long it is “safe” to leave our Thanksgiving turkeys out on the counter, and zillion other regulations, rules, suggestions, and guidelines.  All of this on top of the “billions and billions and billions” that we spend on public education.

Maybe I am asking too much, but I would like to think that by the time our kids are ready to go out on their own, they know that how much they run their air conditioners in the summer and how hot they keep their places in the winter will impact how much heating and cooling costs.  Do we really need public service announcements and tv news casts every holiday about leaving our turkeys out too long?  (I wonder how blown away some of these folks would be if they knew that farm families years ago might leave the turkey out in a cool room until it was picked clean, and lived to tell about it!!)

There was a time in our country when we lived and let live.  There was a time when we minded our own business and let other people mind theirs.  There was a time when we understood that individual liberty was just that; the right to live your life as you wanted as long as you didn’t hurt anyone else.  I’d like to see those days return.  I’d like to see our people be free again and to respect the freedoms of others.

I hope it’s not too much to ask for and not too late to ask.

Our Little Town Floods Yet Again

Leisure Run Flooding Keck Ave & Rt 28 New Bethlehem, PA July 19, 2019
(Photo Courtesy Tech Ready Professionals & RedbankValley.org)

Twenty-three years ago, July 19, 1996,  after weeks of rainy weather, the skies opened up and dumped more than a foot of rain on the Redbank Valley. The creek system, from Brookville to New Bethlehem, was inundated with floodwaters of Biblical, catastrophic proportions.  Twenty-three years later, on July 19, 2019, after weeks of rainy weather, the skies opened up and dumped heavy rains of the northern tributaries of the Redbank Creek, once again, flooding parts of New Bethlehem and the Redbank Valley.

For those of us who were here, back then in the summer of 1996, last night's flooding brought back a whirling mass of memories.  We each have our own memories, the stuff of our individual nightmares.  Whether it be of buildings being swept off their foundations, or trees and stumps racing down the deluge, or all of the “debris” - that only hours before had been homes and businesses – piled up against the Rt 28/66 bridge.  Each of us took away our own personal perspective of the flood.

The thing that stands out the most in my mind, after all these years, is the fact that when the sun came up the next morning, people in New Bethlehem started cleaning up the mess and rebuilding their town and their lives.  There was no standing around waiting for Harrisburg or Washington to tell them what to do and how to do it.  There was no crying for FEMA, or the National Guard, or waiting for some body to swoop in and make things right.  Our neighbors just went back to work and Life went on.

Housebound right now after back surgery, I didn't see the damage from Friday night's flooding until I went to church on Sunday.  There was no FEMA, no Pennsylvania Emergency Management, no government involvement in cleaning up the mess and putting things back to rights.  It's still a mess out there where the creeks washed through town, but the sun keeps coming up, and folks in the Redbank Valley clean up, rebuild and go on.

There are a lot of things that I have come to love and respect about folks here in the Redbank Valley and their strength and resiliency and their ability to come back from adversity may be the characteristics that I have come to respect and admire the most.  These lovely hills have a rugged, bony skeleton; a hardness and a harshness, a wildness beneath their rolling green surfaces.  Our neighbors here in Redbank Valley have a hardness and strength to match the hardness of this land that we call home.

Folks in New Bethlehem will clean up after this flood like they have cleaned up after the others.  The creeks will continue to flow downstream, seasons will come and seasons will go.  We will continue our lives and in some tomorrow there will be another flood.  Our neighbors will come forth after that flood too, and clean up and rebuild.  It is what we do.

God bless and keep everyone who is dealing with this particular flood and cleanup.

Thoughts on the Fourth of July

The echoes of the explosions have faded away, the smell of cordite has drifted down the hollows and over the hills, and many of us will go on to enjoy a long, summer weekend.  Fourth of July, Independence Day – what is it really that we really celebrating, and why do some of us think it is really important?

Before the formation of the United States, every nation-state in the history of Mankind had been formed by groups of people, often sharing the same or similar languages and customs.  Kings and kingdoms grew from leaders who arose in times of crisis and maintained enough strength of arms to remain in control when the crisis abated.  The United States was the first nation in the history of the world that was formed to protect God-given, human rights and liberties.  In fact, the United States was the first nation to acknowledge that human being had Rights and Liberties and that they come from God.  This, in and of itself, may have been the most revolutionary of all of the revolutionary ideas.

Read the words of the Founders:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.

These words and the ideas they express were the most revolutionary political ideas ever presented and even now,  243 years later, they remain the best, most justifiable reasons for the existence of any government.  Herein, is the foundation of American Exceptionalism.

Think about the ideas in that paragraph, taken from the Declaration of Independence.  “That all men are created equal . . . that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, . . . that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”

Just and legitimate governments can only exist through the consent of the people that are governed.  This is one of the most radical ideas in politics in human history!  With this statement, the Founders of the United States defined for the whole world, for all time, the definition of a legitimate government.  No government that comes to power, or remains in power, through coercion, violence, or use of arms against the population can ever be considered legitimate - American Exceptionalism.

Governments are created by people – therefore, governments are the property of the people, the people are not the property of the government.  For all of human history, the "people" belonged to the Crown, except in the United States – again, American Exceptionalism.

The purpose of government is to secure the unalienable Rights that accrue to Mankind from God.  Any function that a government does, that does not serve to secure human rights and individual liberties is an illegitimate, or at least questionable,  function.  Another example of American Exceptionalism.

All men are created equal and given certain Rights, by God, that cannot be taken away.  There are those among us who will curse and condemn this nation because there was slavery at the time of the founding, because our Founders did not acknowledge "women's rights", or "protect" the Native Americans.  Anyone who condemns our founding or our Founders because of these issues is arrogantly ignorant, intolerant, and ill-education.  Slavery existed, in one form or another, in almost every country, every culture, every society since the dawn of Time.  Nowhere in the world were women included in the body politic.  Hells Bells!  In most places in the world in 1776, only a few nobles had any rights or freedoms at all.  We, America, have gone through amazing struggles to end slavery and to finally incorporate all citizens into the body politic.  Not another nation in modern history has struggled and succeeded to the extent that we have.  The interpretation of "all men being equal" is likely to continue to evolve, and maybe American Exceptionalism is an ongoing, evolutionary phenomenon.

To condemn the Founders for the things that they left out, things that no one had ever considered in their time or place, is simply ignorant.  To discredit, to throw out, to walk away from the phenomenal, exceptional ideas of the American Founding because it wasn't somehow "perfect" smacks of a nearly limitless arrogance.  To assume that one can take a hodgepodge of liberal ideas floated from college campi over the last 50 years and make a better system than our Founders did speaks volumes to the stupidity of modern progressives.

The merits of the Founding is well recorded in History.  During the first 150 years of our Nation, American Exceptionalism unleashed the greatest period of economic and technological growth in the history of the World.  During that century and a half, when our Nation held true to its Founding, America and Americans led the world from conditions that had changed little since the time of Christ into the age of heavier than air flight.  At the time of the Founding, the fastest method of travel was horseback.  One hundred fifty years later, man was flying in airplanes.

During those 150 years, there was a steady flow of (legal) immigrants arriving on our shores.  Like those before them, these (legal) migrants came seeking religious and political freedom and economic opportunity.  They left their original nationality behind and willingly became Americans – adding the richness of their cultures to what is the distinct American Culture.  They came to grow, to thrive, to try, to be all that God wanted them to be.  These people, these Americans, opened a continent, adapted to extreme cold and extreme heat, adapted to forests, mountains, prairies, and deserts and in their adaptation, the created a nation, a dream, a vision that still draws those who want to be free.

I contend that the freedoms guaranteed in our Founding were the energy and drive behind this creativity.  I do not think that anyone can prove me wrong. 

And that, Faithful Readers, is what we celebrate on July 4th;

“That all men are created equal . . . that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, . . . that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .” , and the American Exceptionalism that grew from these ideas.

April in the Old Coal Mining Country (with apologies to Jack Kerouac)

March roared into our mountain world like one wild, super mean, hungry lion this year.  She pounced upon us with a viciousness that, in my humble opinion, was hardly called for.  The first two weeks of March were bitterly cold. In some ways, much more painful than the long cold spell that we survived in January.  The last two weeks were wet and windy and mean, even if they were not as cold.   Years ago, I read a description of March that has stayed with me across the long years: “ March is an old witch with big silver eyes and frozen rain in her wild hair.”  And so she is.  And March 2019, was no exception here in the old, coal mining country.

Mostly the mountains and ridges here in our country carried the fading gray of winter through March.  There were occasional skiffs of snow that brightened the hills, if only for a day or two, but the hills pretty much stayed that winter gray that we all know so well.  During the last few days of the witchy month, the woods began to quicken.  If you looked quick and sharp, by the last windy days, you could start to some of the earliest maples beginning to bud red, and the willows starting to turn bright yellow, and some of the greenbriars starting to show color.  But, you had to look quick and sharp, the gray still overwhelms the hills and hollows where the old men dug the coal.

Then April blew into the mountains here on the last of the March witch's winds.  But April is not March, and the winds blew warm and dried out the ground and picked up the last of last year's leaves and swept them across the land in whirlwinds, arabesques, and comically, wild dances.  Still not springtime, but there seems to be laughter and smiles in the April air.  Like the life rising in the trees around us, I think that Hope rises in our souls in the spring, too.  We have suffered and survived the winter, bound by the cold and dark, but Life returns to the land with the sun and we come back to Life as well.

Life returns to our mountain world with the rising of April.  It is subtle at first – a few trees begin to bud; red, yellow, and white buds begin to color the gray woods.  The first spring flowers begin to show, the daffodils, the forsythia, and the tulips.  Suddenly, the lawns and fields are full of robins, hunting flocking, mating, nesting.  The silent air of winter is gone, replaced with the chirping and tweeting and singing of flocks and flocks of birds that are back for the summer.  If you sleep with your bedroom windows open, the odds are that you have been awakened once or twice already by the pre-dawn symphony.  That is one of the few things that I don't mind interrupting my morning sleep.  There is pure harmony and joy in the bird's pre-dawn singing.

How can we speak of the capriciousness of April without commenting on the oft poetically referred to “April showers”?  Although March, in almost any place that I have lived, tends to be wet, somehow we have come to relate rain “showers” with April.  I was thinking about “April Showers” as I spent the day driving through torrential rainstorms and near hurricane force winds yesterday.  There was nothing nurturing, nor loving, nor whimsical about yesterday's April shower.  It was nasty, cold and brutal.  Yesterday's April rain was as miserable as anything January can dish out.  Even with that wintry rain, the trees pushed leaves out all day, giving a much different look to the woods by evening.   But, then I remembered the shower last week that left that marvelous smell of warm, summer thundershowers; the smell of warm, wet asphalt, spring soil, and the sweet, sweet smell of growing things.  April is capricious, wild, and wildly unpredictable.

If March is an old witch with big silver eyes and frozen rain in her wild hair, then April is a giggly, teenaged girl, who can't decide on what she wants to wear to the party.  She has windblown blonde hair and wears flowers in her hair.  Her peaches and cream complexion belie her flashing wild eyes.  She takes us from the last gasps of winter, through a wild ride of changing weather, while Life, and warm weather, return to the hills and hollows, the mountains and valleys of the old, coal mining country.  April is a wild ride with a giddy woman-child whose mercurial whimsy keeps us guessing as the sun climbs higher into the sky over the abandoned tunnels and lonely, empty strip jobs.

Those empty strip jobs rare their hunched backs into the vast dome of the sky over our mountains.  Some of them just beginning to grow the wild grasses, some of them covered with rich, carpets of grass that have developed over the long, sweep of years.  On some of the old domes, the brush has begun encroaching on the grasslands as the inevitable, endless, perfect cycle of reforestation works its way through time.  Some of the older stip jobs are forested now, that many years have swept through this land where the old men dug the coal.

And true to keeping with her wild-child, capricious, giddy adolescent persona,  April delivered a marvelously beautiful spring day today.  The morning sun lifted above the eastern hills, riding up in the clear and glorious sky.  A few puffy white clouds rode the soft wind and the air was as clear as crystal.  All across the neighborhood, the rhythmic hum of lawn mowers drowned out the flocks of birds, if only for a while.  The afternoon smelled of newly mown grass.  Not a person in the world could have ordered a more perfect day!

Darkness covers our mountain world again, tonight, as April wanders inexorably toward May.  The air is soft and warm, with just a bit of chill in it – perfect for the last few days of April.  March is a witch kitty everyplace where I have ever lived, and April drives you crazy 'cause it's not quite springtime.  This land where the old men dug the coal is no different.  Hold on to Hope, summer is just over the horizon.

Publishing the Honor Roll - Caution or Paranoia?

I get accused sometimes of not paying attention to what is going on around me.  Sometimes, that is a fair critique, and other times, my apparent lack of awareness is a ruse that helps me to maintain the tenuous hold on sanity that I have.  I was caught totally unaware Monday evening at the school board meeting when I heard that our high school principal had unilaterally decided not to publish the names of the students who make the honor roll.  I had missed that, somehow.

Principal Rupp told the meeting that she decided not to publish the names anymore because that publishing Honor Roll kids' names “could” make the kids easier targets for internet stalkers.

Seriously?

There is no denying that the world around us is full of dangers.  But it always has been.  The dangers change with changing times, but there have always been countless ways for people, somehow, to get hurt or killed out in the world.  We don't have to worry about being eaten by wolves as our great grandparents did, but they didn't have to worry about getting run over by a truck, either.  Life is brief, life is fleeting – one famous quote is “life is brutal, nasty, and short”.  It is what it is.

One of our “jobs”, if you will, as responsible adults, is to protect our children from harm.  This is a completely natural thing – we all know how animal mothers protect their young.  Preservation of the species is one of the most dominate instincts in animals.  We want our kids to be safe.  We don't want them to get hurt. We want to protect them.  That is good and natural and normal.

But, equally as important, is our role as trainers, in which we are to teach our kids how to exist in the world.  This role as trainer might be even more important than our role as protector.  How are our children going to function in the world when we are gone, if we have not taught them, prepared them, and forewarned them of things that they may face?  There has to be a balance between protecting our children and preparing them for the dangers in life.  We will have failed as adults if we protect our children to the point that they are completely unprepared to face the realities of the world around them.

We can learn a lot by watching the animals around us.  The momma cat hides her kittens when they are born.  She hides them from the tom cats who kill kittens so the tabby will come back in heat.  But, as the kittens get older, she brings them out into the world that she knows.  She teaches the kittens to stalk, to pounce, to fight. With each passing day, momma cat lets the kittens wander farther and farther afield.  She knows that they need to explore and to learn, and yes, they need to face some dangers on their own.  The mother cat knows that is how they will learn to survive.  In several months time, the kittens that started out blind and helpless, hidden from their greatest danger, become fully active, young adult cats.  The mother cat protected the kittens, but taught them how to exist in a world full of dangers.

I think that there are a couple of pathologies going on in modern American society that may help explain the overprotectiveness that we seem, as a society, to have for our children.  Our culture is obsessed with youthfulness.  We do not want to get old.  We are infatuated with looking, acting, being young.  And, if we let our children become young adults, then we can no longer be those same young adults.  I believe that we are crippling our kids by trying to keep them “forever young” so that we too can remain “forever young”.

The other pathology seems to be a collective paranoia about real, and imagined dangers.  The late author, Michael Crichton, posited in his novel, “State of Fear”, that following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, governments, news media, and academia teamed up to create the illusion of dangers where none actually existed.  This consortium wanted to generate fear within the population as a people afraid, are a people easier to control.  I am not sure that there is an actual conspiracy to create fear, but I do think that our news and entertainment media have created a perception of dangers far beyond those that really exist.

We have become convinced that our children are not safe if they are out of our sight for even a few minutes.  Our kids don't play outdoors.  Our kids don't spend summer days riding bicycles around town and around the area like we did when we were kids.  We keep our children indoors and with us nearly all the time.  We are not letting our children explore, live, and experience things.  Because of our collective paranoia, we are depriving our children of many of the real world experiences that they need to have in the normal process of growing up.

It may be a very fine line between being protective and becoming paranoia.  There is a danger in crossing that line because it is a rapid drop from paranoia, to stark, raving, lunatic paranoia.  Shadows become monsters, the slightest noise becomes some unseen danger and nothing is real anymore.  Not publishing the names of Honor Roll students to protect them from “internet predators” may have crossed the line into that land of lunatic paranoia.

The question now becomes, if it is dangerous to publish the names of Honor Roll students, isn't it also dangerous to name our athletes, our kids in extracurriculars, our students doing community services?  Where does Mrs. Rupp draw the line?  I really hope that all parents in the Redbank Valley School District will let the Superintendent and the School Board know that you want our students named in the paper so that they can get the acknowledge that they earn.  It is an important part of growing up and part of us as adults, bringing the next generation into the community.

A Matter of Perspective, I Reckon

It has been fun the last couple of weeks reporting on and writing about some of our neighbors who are upset with the new chief of police here in New Bethlehem. A lot of us don't handle changes well and Chief Malnofsky and the new police force is definitely a change from the reign of Chief Ryan. Far be it from me to say one system was better than the other – but, policing in New Bethlehem is different than it used to be. What is interesting to me, is how differently some of us are seeing the same thing.

Most of the complaints about the new chief and his officers are coming from several of the social clubs in New Bethlehem and East Brady. It seems like some of the members of these clubs think that the new New Bethlehem Police Department is singling out club members for harassment. According to these spokespersons, it seems like the NB cops are spending an inordinate amount of time "stalking" club members and skulking around the parking lots looking for people to harass on car safety violations and DUI's and such.

It is not paranoia when they really are out to get you.

According to New Bethlehem's Borough Council President, Sandy Mateer, reorganizing and restructuring the police department was in the works before Chief Ryan decided to see if the grass really was greener on that side of the fence. Mrs. Mateer says that a lot of residents have been expressing concern about the lack of policing going on in the area. Adequate police protection is essential for the orderly growth, or revitalization, of a community. That is one of the driving forces behind many of the civic leaders in New Bethlehem here in the second decade of the 21^st century; to revitalize and renew the community in New Bethlehem and the Redbank Valley.

Part of the plans for reorganizing the NBPD was adding more full-time officers, having at least 2 officers on each shift, and splitting the coverage territory into 2 districts – New Bethlehem area and the Rimersburg - East Brady area. Longer range plans would eventually see a police substation in East Brady. With 2 officers on duty each shift and the work area clearly defined, Borough Council hoped to have greater police visibility and coverage. It's always good to have a plan.

Having a plan “b” is usually a good idea, too.

There are 2 pretty well-defined sides to the current NB cop debate. One side wants more policing and the other side, not so much policing. What is best for the community as a whole? Who really should decide how the police do their work? In an ideal, Libertarian world, everybody would respect everybody else and we wouldn't need police. That ain happening on this side of the Pearly Gates, so we have to accept some amount of policing as part of the price that we pay for living in a civilized society. Such as it is.

But, I digress. There has to be some amount, some degree of police enforcement in order to maintain that civil society. We don't always realize just how many laws, regulations, and ordinances we have allowed the Ruling Class to impose upon us! It is likely that every one of us breaks a bunch of laws every day without ever knowing it. No police department in the world can enforce all of the laws that we, living in the supposedly "land of the free" are bound by. Every police department has to be directed by a legislative body to prioritize the laws, regulations, and ordinances to enforce. The New Bethlehem Police Department is under the direction of the New Bethlehem Borough Council. The priority of enforcement, then, comes from the Borough Council.

In theory, we “the people” direct the Police Department through the Borough Council.

In theory. Seriously.

I think that if we are honest, each of us has things that we think the police should pay more attention to while paying less attention to other things. I imagine that some of us think that Ordinance enforcement is a waste of the police's time, while some of us probably don't think car safety (brake lights, turn signals, etc.) are an awfully big deal. Most of us probably think that violent crimes against people and property should be a priority of any police department – probably not much disagreement there. The disagreement comes in how much enforcement we want to see in other areas of our mutual communal interactions. I think that likely, our preference about non-violent crime enforcement comes from the things that we do, or leave undone, in our daily lives.

I'd like to see the police spend a whole day ticketing people who stop past the white line at the intersection of Broad and Wood Streets, but that's just me.

The social clubs say that the “nit-picking” police are hurting business at the clubs and that this is going to hurt the community as the clubs financially support school and community events. The police say that they are not targeting the clubs. Chief Malnofsky says that his officers don't have time to “stake out” the Moose, VFW, and Eagles. Personally, I would hope that he is right. One has to wonder though, how much damage the members of the clubs are doing by posting cop warnings on social media on Friday and Saturday nights.

It seems to me like our community is going through some changes and maybe we all need to calm down and let things settle for a bit before we get all “take to the streets” and protesty. The new chief hasn't hired up a full roster yet. The department is re-organizing and rebuilding. Be patient, give it time, things will fall into place with a new normal before too long.

In the meantime, I am going to go scrape the snow off my headlights and tail lights and make a quick turn signal and brake light check before I go over town. Maybe next time I'm at the bar, I will leave one beer sooner than usual. And, maybe I'll stop posting cop warnings on my Facebook page telling folks not to come to town. Maybe I will be a little more cautious driving through town. Maybe I can do some little things to help make the situation better.

By the way, the New Bethlehem Police are having a “meet and greet” Saturday, February 2, 1 PM at the Community Center. It will be interesting to see how many “concerned” residents will turn out.

Meanwhile, I'd still like to see more enforcement at the Broad & Wood Streets intersection.

The Snow Storm

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields” 

With these lines, 19th-century American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson begins his descriptive poem of the snow storm with it's enforced solitude and wind-driven sculpturing. Looking out my window this morning, I see the Borough of South Bethlehem and the creek hill beyond covered in a blanket of fresh, new snow. As in Emerson's “Snow Storm”, there is a quietness and an emptiness that seems to blanket the world this morning as well.

South Bethlehem in Snow

In Emerson's time, snow storms were a normal part of living in the north. They happened every winter, people planned for them, and people dealt with them. In that long-ago time, when people were so much more self-reliant, the snowstorm wasn't something to be feared and dreaded, it simply was something that happened and had to be dealt with. The winter snow storm was as normal, and natural and nothing to be overly concerned about. The snow would come. People would deal with it. The snow would melt. People would tell their storm stories well into summer. The snowstorm was simply part of living.

So much has changed in 200 years! With all of our modern, scientifically wondrous technology, the naturally, normally occurring snow storm has become something to be feared, something dangerous, something almost supernatural. We have become so removed from all things natural, that a potential snow storm takes on the properties of some sort of sinister, evil, living entity, bent on wreaking havoc, causing pain, and destroying human lives.

It is just a snow storm! Snowstorms can happen in any winter. Snowstorms have been happening since the beginning of time – long before mankind arrived on the scene and they will keep on happening long after mankind has faded out of the picture. It is as natural as the sun coming up in the east and going down in the west. Yet, with all of our sophistication, all of our technology, all of our great scientific advances, we are terrified, almost to paralysis by the threat of a snowstorm.

The very technologic nature of our modern lifestyle makes us far more vulnerable to the vagaries of nature than we were in earlier, less sophisticated times. We don't, as a rule, have food stockpiled in our freezers and pantries, as our grandparents and those before them did. We don't have our own water supply, our own waste disposal systems, our own sources of heat and “power” (lighting and cooking fuels). We have become dependent, and interdependent, on the providers of our water, sewerage, electricity, gas, and oil. Most of us cannot provide for ourselves, no matter how much we might want to, and no matter how much money we may have.

There may be a certain nostalgia for being snowbound in the old farmhouse in the hills. There were kerosene lamps, Coleman camp stoves, a fireplace, and a cistern from which we could draw water. There was a freezer full of meats and vegetables. We had our own milk cow. Being snowbound was no big deal. But, we were not reliant on electricity for our entertainment, work, and information. We did not live in an instantaneous world where we thought that we had to have moment by moment information from around the world. The snowstorm was not that big a deal in that time and place; we were self-sufficient, at least for a few days at a time.

While there may be a certain comfort in remembering being snowbound 50 years ago, I don't know that I would want to return to the standard of living we had back then. I am not really sure that I would want to milk the family cow twice each day. I don't really think that I would want to carry firewood in and ashes out every day. I am not sure that I would want to rely on the three broadcast TV networks for my news anymore and I would not want to be limited to network TV for my entertainment. I think it would be difficult to get along without cell phones. All in all, I guess I am more comfortable with our progress than with the self-reliance that we may have lost.

Most of the time.

Reading over what I have written so far, I have another thought. Is it possible that we, ourselves, are not as helpless and at the mercy of nature as I might think that we are? Is it possible that our constant exposure to news and social media intensifies the perception of impending danger from what are just natural occurrences? Think about it for a bit.

TV and Internet news starts warning of storms almost a week before they hit. The constant 24-hour news broadcasting may lead to exaggeration and overhyping. When you have space (or time) to fill with words, there is a tendency to use more words than you need. Superfluous adjectives become the norm and we may use exaggerated hyperbole to describe relatively mundane events. A snowstorm headed our way is normal, but “normal” is not a great headline. Writers and newscasters are pulled toward the extreme – “life-threatening”, “devastating”, “killer storm” get thrown around with almost wild abandon. A snowstorm, that may make travel tough for a day or two gets built up into the most frightening event of our lifetime.

Maybe, the fault lies not in ourselves, but in our media. (Apologies to Wm. Shakespeare.)

The roads here in the Redbank Valley were bad yesterday and are horrible this morning, but you can get through if you take your time and are careful. We didn't lose power. It was a snowstorm. We have seen others in the past and we will see more in the future.

Oh, and it's cold here this morning. Cold, not “life-threatening”, not “devastating”, not “apocalyptic”, just cold. Bundle up if you go outside.