Rock you
No. Not unlike a hurricane at all, now that you mention it.
Today Small Publication has that sort of Snow Day feeling, even though we’re the ones you might think would be the most busy during all this Ivan hullabaloo. Well, we were busy, earlier on, but now my boss says to “Watch and Wait.”
We have the local news on tv, where scripted panic has ensued. Schools are closed - and outside, guys who look a lot like my boss, save their unruly beards, are walking the streets handing out brochures about the end of the world. Not to downplay the severity of this hurricane for those who are actually feeling its acute effects, but Atlanta-
Atlanta makes me laugh. Atlanta that closes its schools when there’s frost on the ground. I swear I remember crawling through snow to get to my bus-stop in Pittsburgh as a lassie, and then standing there for a half-hour, my snot freezing under three layers of scarf. Finally the bus would come up the hill, snow-chains rattling – We’d all rush the bus and try to sit close to the front, where the heater was. (Yes. Cool operated in reverse on our school buses in February.) And school would go on as usual.
They say Atlanta is a city of transplants, so you’d think people wouldn’t be so freaking wimpy about the Elements. Maybe it’s because all the wimpiest people have left their hardier towns to come here.
(Okay, so I’m conflating matters and yes it’s true this city also has roads that flood after a half hour of rain, let alone two days of it, so there might be some cause for concern, there.)
Telling the devil
I think part of it is that (knock wood), I have led an extremely lucky life so far, in terms of random, devastating events like these. Forecasters’ projections make Ivan look like it’s going to wend its way around Atlanta, as if the city had some kind of force-field around it, and this does not surprise me.
Yes, I just typed “knock wood” up there, but I don’t actually believe in luck, per se.
Except I do, I guess, in small ways. For example, I believe I am not the type of person who ever wins raffles or other random-drawings.
My coworker is eerily lucky in this way. He’s won like, $300 in the Pick Three Lottery, five times in the last three months. After the third time he won, I started buying Pick Three tickets myself. To no avail.
I’m more of the Lucky type in terms of hitting rewind on a cassette tape, and hitting stop at exactly the spot before the song I want to hear.
Really, I know none of this “lucky” or “unlucky” business is true. Every one of us lives guided by more superstition than we care to believe. It’s weird, the little patterns and parameters we set up for ourselves, the things we say are so, just so we don’t have to see all that scary uncertainty that’s out there. And all that scary freedom.
No. Not unlike a hurricane at all, now that you mention it.
Today Small Publication has that sort of Snow Day feeling, even though we’re the ones you might think would be the most busy during all this Ivan hullabaloo. Well, we were busy, earlier on, but now my boss says to “Watch and Wait.”
We have the local news on tv, where scripted panic has ensued. Schools are closed - and outside, guys who look a lot like my boss, save their unruly beards, are walking the streets handing out brochures about the end of the world. Not to downplay the severity of this hurricane for those who are actually feeling its acute effects, but Atlanta-
Atlanta makes me laugh. Atlanta that closes its schools when there’s frost on the ground. I swear I remember crawling through snow to get to my bus-stop in Pittsburgh as a lassie, and then standing there for a half-hour, my snot freezing under three layers of scarf. Finally the bus would come up the hill, snow-chains rattling – We’d all rush the bus and try to sit close to the front, where the heater was. (Yes. Cool operated in reverse on our school buses in February.) And school would go on as usual.
They say Atlanta is a city of transplants, so you’d think people wouldn’t be so freaking wimpy about the Elements. Maybe it’s because all the wimpiest people have left their hardier towns to come here.
(Okay, so I’m conflating matters and yes it’s true this city also has roads that flood after a half hour of rain, let alone two days of it, so there might be some cause for concern, there.)
Telling the devil
I think part of it is that (knock wood), I have led an extremely lucky life so far, in terms of random, devastating events like these. Forecasters’ projections make Ivan look like it’s going to wend its way around Atlanta, as if the city had some kind of force-field around it, and this does not surprise me.
Yes, I just typed “knock wood” up there, but I don’t actually believe in luck, per se.
Except I do, I guess, in small ways. For example, I believe I am not the type of person who ever wins raffles or other random-drawings.
My coworker is eerily lucky in this way. He’s won like, $300 in the Pick Three Lottery, five times in the last three months. After the third time he won, I started buying Pick Three tickets myself. To no avail.
I’m more of the Lucky type in terms of hitting rewind on a cassette tape, and hitting stop at exactly the spot before the song I want to hear.
Really, I know none of this “lucky” or “unlucky” business is true. Every one of us lives guided by more superstition than we care to believe. It’s weird, the little patterns and parameters we set up for ourselves, the things we say are so, just so we don’t have to see all that scary uncertainty that’s out there. And all that scary freedom.
Labels: Atlanta
posted by Alice at 3:10 AM
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