The sheep were standing out by their feeder – like Fate, they pay no attention to storms. But the donkeys weren’t coming out, period.
So we decided to feed them all hay in the barn. They all live and eat peaceably together. Maria scattered the hay evenly across the back of the barn. The animals will be in there all day and most of the night, looking at it outside.
They say border collies are the smartest dogs, but they often do foolish things, like sitting out in the snow and ice for hours. Gus, a Boston Terrier, is smart in his own way. This morning, he rushed outside into the snow, lifted his leg in a manly way, turned and raced back into the house to sit by the wood stove fire.
Gus knows how to deal with a storm.
The old farmers used to call them storms, or “nor-easters,’ or “Canadian Howlers,” just ask Captain Ahab, but the corporate media pundits have a favorite new name, the bombogenesis storm.
I notice the weather channel pundits are pushing their many news alert options, for just $15 or $20 a month, you can be alerted instantly to any sign of rain, snow, heat, flooding or stormy weather.
I can hardly imagine a quicker way to drive myself made than get bussed all day long about the End Of Days. Some of these storms are truly serious, and it is good to be warned about them, but “bombogenesis” isn’t, to me, about weather, it’s about the never-ending intrusion of Corporate Values and Corporate speak into our lives.
The National Weather Service did what everything thought was an outstanding job predicting the weather, and in the age of climate change, it is essential to have sane and rational people advising us about the weather as a public service, and not just another corporate scheme to take our money and exploit our fear and vulnerability.
The National Weather Service is cutting hundreds of employees this year as a result of the President’s wish to cut the federal workforce. The Weather Channel, which specializes in drama and hysteria and terrifying Apocalypse maps in many colors, added hundreds of employees in recent years.
There are big storms, and they are dangerous, and they make a ton of money for the hysterical and alarmist corporations that have taken over our weather as well as our culture, workplaces, family stores and restaurants, movies an books.
“Bombogenisis” is the presentation of corporate-speak-for profit, not accurate weather. The very name suggests a nuclear-scale explosion or catastrophic even, and as bad as these storms are, they are not that.
This morning, I went onto the National Weather service forecast site, which is free, and read this; “…strong storm system to affect the northern Mid-Atlantic into the Northeast with multiple hazards….”
Widespread snow, rain and strong winds developed overnight as a winter storm rapidly developed over the Norheast,” said the weather service, and northern Mid-Atlantic regions.” Heavy snow across portions of New York have already exceeded a foot in a few locations with more forecast today.” They NWS said there would be about 5 to 8 inches of snow in my area.
By contrast, the Weather Channel promised a “punishing” apocalypse, warnings and watches, “major” flooding and many feet of snow. “Hours and hours of damaging winds, power outages will be a big deal, and “dangerous” snow and “damaging winds.” This a very dangerous storm, we were told, almost unprecedented. Be careful.
Honestly, it was just an outrageous example of the marketing of hysteria and fear. No wonder we are all on edge.
The breathless End of Days forecast was accompanied by video of drowning drivers in previous floods, destroyed homes, drowned dog. It was a different forecast in a different tone, generalizing wildly and offering a steady stream of accidents, flashing lights in police cards, rescues in streams, and of course those news alerts delivered continuously to your phone for just pennies a day, as if the doomsday forecast wasn’t enough.
Wherever you lived, you would take away an almost frightening sense of urgency and peril, where you faced danger or not.
What has happened here? Climate change is real, and superstorms are dangerous.
Isn’t this what government is for, to protect us by calmly and professionally offering us information about the weather that was not hyped up to draw viewers and money and offered calmly and clearly in good faith so we can make our own decisions about what to do?
The odd truth is the National Weather Service site is easier to read and more helpful. I actually could see my county outlined right up there so I know exactly whats coming here. And it is radically different from the conclusions I might reach from the Weather Channel or the other cable news weather outlets. These for profit sites need to terrify all of us, no matter where we live, to justify their ad rates by drawing anxious viewers.
If you think about it, those animated maps, bristling with rain, snow, lighting and wind symbols, are almost completely useless if you just need to know what the weather would be in your neighborhood.
The modern corporation is like a shark, they are never still, never content, there is never enough profit or necessary loss. They just keep trawling for money and inventing new and often false need. How many of us really need continuous emergency weather alerts. Don’t we spend enough time on our smartphones:
My county in upstate New York is not in danger, the coast of Massachusetts is. Most of the Northeast – the vast majority – is facing a nasty nor’easter, not the end of the world. Check it out for yourself.
It is actually possible to get an accurate forecast without wanting to shoot your animals and crawl into a bomb-proof bunker. And your taxes are already paying for it.
The NWS has been doing this for well over a century, and no one has complained about their work or professionalism. The greatest public service would be to add more jobs to the NWS and take some away from the breathless videographers on cable. Merchants of doom under a different name.
Why, I wonder, have we turned this important function over to just another money-grubbing corporation?
What exactly, do our tax dollars to go pay for, other than expensive furniture and first-class flights for government officials, or the big lie that cutting government will be more efficient and save us money, rather than take it away.
Really?
What is the new role of government, anyway? To sublet our safety, culture and lives to the Corporate Nation. It is sad to see the kids of Parkland learn this lesson, one that so many have learned before them. There are very few things in our country that come before money, including our lives and safety.
To me, the Weather Channel and its spawns are just louder, more colorful, much more hysterical, and profoundly less honest and responsible than the National Weather Service. I think that’s the truth of it. People get addicted to bad news, they tend to glide over the good.
The National Weather Service meterologists are quite good enough for me, and I need to know about the weather, I live on a farm. They do not try to scare the hell out of me or sell me things. They use words, not dizzying cartoons.
This perversion and corporatizing of weather alienates us from the earth, turns the environment into a dangerous and destructive thing. Rather than helping us respond to the great changes that create “bombogenisis’ – and what an opportunity these storms are to do that – our new “weather channels” are content to take our money and keep us frightened.
This all comes under the category of a simpler life. We waste so much, we buy so much that we don’t need, we have trivialized the very air and weather we share, we have lost touch with nature and Mother Earth. We explot her every day by turning her into just another profit center.
Pope Francis: “Today’s media do enable us to communicate and to share our knowledge and affections. Yet they also shield us from direct contact with the pain, the fears and the joys of others and the complexity of their personal experiences.”
Weather is important. For many of us, it is our primary connection with Mother Earth, our common home. She deserves better than this crass marketing of “weather.” “True wisdom, as the fruit of self-examination, dialogue and generous encounter between persons, is not acquired by a mere accumulation of data,” wrote Pope Francis, “which eventually leads to overload and confusion, a sort of mental pollution.”
He must have been watching the weather channels.
The bottom line up here where I live is that we will get some wet snow and high winds, and most of the snow will be gone by Sunday, melted by rain and warmer temperatures. We will batten down anything that needs to be battened down and set out the candles. Tomorrow we will all be here, cleaning up the cars and most likely going out to eat.
I know it’s a very different and serious story in some coastal areas, but I really wonder what the oddly-dressed hysterics and dramatic actors with “up” – and grim – voices are offering people who the National Weather Service can – and does – offer for free and with greater accuracy and integrity. They don’t need to scare people for money.
Because it’s the National Weather Service that gives the Weather Channel it’s information about storms and forecasts, although you might not recognize their storm from the one you are likely to see tonight.
This reminds me of my friend Glenn, a farmer who used to live near the first Bedlam Farm. “I can offer weather alerts for free,” he said. “I’ll just stick my head out the window and put up a red flag for bad weather, a blue one for sunshine. I do it every day. No charge.”
There is nothing I love more than wrapping my big Canon in plastic and rushing out into a big storm to capture the sharp contrasts, the emotion and the subliminal sense of drama of a big storm. Yes, I have pneumonia (early stage) and a mean spirited cough, but it only takes a second if you don’t bother to get dressed and run outside.
This morning, I woke up in a coughing fit so severe I thought I might pass out. I happened to be texting a friend who works in the medical world and Maria was sound asleep and I couldn’t bear to wake her. This, I know, is the foolish way in which many men perish.
My friend and i are both up at night late, and we often text one another at 3 a.m.
I told my friend the coughing was intense, I was having trouble breathing and was getting light-headed. She asked me if I had taken the steroid medication Karen Bruce gave me the night earlier, and I hadn’t, i heard that it keeps people awake and amped-up at night.
She is a gentle soul, but direct. “Goddamn it Jon,’ she wrote, “take it, you will feel much better. This stuff really works.” I did and it does. In a few minutes, I had stopped coughing and was breathing normally.
I suppose it is stupid for me to go outside in a storm right after being diagnosed with pneumonia, but the truth is, I am not brave or macho about it. I need to get rid of this coughing, it’s awful. But my happiness at taking photos in a storm greatly outweighs any slight danger from going outside for a minute or two.
I was fashionably dressed in my boots, slouch beanie and heavy blue bathrobe. Remember, I am a fashion icon now.
Pneumonia is not that big a deal, even for me. My rule about sickness is you have to take it seriously, but can’t give it your life if possible.
This mania – if I can walk, I blog and write – is sometimes bitterly controversial in my family, although Maria is no different than me, even worse. At least I go to the doctor when I am sick (or the nurse-practitioner), she has been to a doctor once in the decade I’ve known her.
Her light might be falling off and if I suggest she make a doctor’s appointment, she just looks at me as if I were made and says “a doctor/ What for?,” as if I had suggested she sell her quilts on the moon.
I am also inspired by Fate, who has no idea that there are howling winds, freezing temperatures, ice and snow. It’s all the same to her. Even the faithful Red is eager to get inside. And Gus is happy to hug the wood stove.
It was cold out there, I will admit, and after a few shots I liked, I yielded to bullying and came inside to be warm, blog, and then go to bed for awhile. I love photographing storms, it is always a great creative challenge for me to figure out how to capture the feeling of them.
And besides, it’s good for the lungs to breath clean and fresh air. I hear the back door opening, and so I might want to wrap this up and head upstairs for a while. I’m not afraid mind you, just polite.
Stay dry and warm, where ever you are. I hope the Dystopian forecasts are off. In my mind, Mother Earth is singing her song, and I am hearing it. I’ll sleep much of the day, and creep out in the late afternoon.
The RISSE Amazon Children’s Refugee Wish List has risen to the challenge, and taken an impressive (and inexpensive) turn towards acquiring some serious learning tools – software programs that cost about $5 and teach the refugee students analogy puzzles, subtraction secrets, word challenges, “algebra antics,’ numbers problems, decimals, division, multiplication.
This morning, I bought “Mindware Subtraction Secrets” for $16.34, in honor of the fact that I still cannot do basic math, including subtraction. I wish these children a better fate. There are used versions of most the software programs on sale for as little as $5.
RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support center in Albany, has nearly 200 students enrolled in it’s after school program, and 1000 adults in other classes. They are very hard pressed, their needs are great, their resources small.
When refugees come to upstate New York in America, they are given modest assistance stipends for six months, then they have nowhere to go for additional help but RISSE, whose funding has been slashed to the bones in the so-called America First campaign, otherwise known as bankers and CEO’s first, needy people last.
Refugees and immigrants are different. Immigrants come to the United States because they choose to live here, they often have professions and resources. Refugees come here because they are desperate, fleeing genocide, war, drought and natural disaster.
They often come with nothing but what they can wear and carry, their lives and families have been shattered.
Many of these families are split, the fathers or mothers either slaughtered in their home countries, or trapped away from their families by our country’s especially cruel new immigration policies.
These children have experienced the worst of humanity, and often are still struggling to learn back language and mathematics schools. I think we are offering them the best of humanity.
The public schools are required take them, but it is often difficult for them to learn in those underfunded and crowded environments and a completely alien culture. At RISSE, the staff works valiantly to teach these kids the basic skills they need to advance in the public schools and acclimate to American life and our social and cultural skills and values.
It is exciting for me to see RISSE agree to let us help these children adapt to our country and learn what they need to know. I take it as an affirmation, an act of trust, a change to do good and feel good.
No one else is doing what RISSE is doing, it is essential that they be supported and grow. The kids love the RISSE school, they have wonderful support and community there. The teachers are committed, skilled and especially loving.
I hope we can help buy these modest gifts and help touch young lives in the most direct and urgently needed way. Every gift changes a young life and touches a soul. The money goes right to the children and only to them. You get to pick what you want to give.
Education is the pathway for these children, they are eager to learn. I can’t imagine giving anyone a more worthwhile gift. Thanks and take a look at the robust and growing wish list. The Army Of Good is a happy virus, spreading more good everywhere they go.
Please check out the expanded RISSE Wish List for the children. You can change a life for $12.
If you need it, the RISSE shipping address is 715 Morris St., Albany, N.Y., 12208-2208. The phone is 518 621 1041.
