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"Katrina without all the water"

Babe gathers information for The Feline Report of activities outside in the yard from his comfortable heated offices above the radiator on the kitchen counter this morning.

"I must say, travelers were much more polite without the traffic lights telling them what to do," imails our sis, filing her report from the trenches on the consequences — unanticipated and otherwise — of the massive power outages left in the wake of Thursday night's ice storm to the north, west and south of us here in outage-free Chelsea-by-the-Sea. Goomp, reporting from the rocky coast of Maine, has been without power for 60 hours now. The generator covers heat and lights in parts of the house, and after some false starts he's finally got a working cell phone by his side, but no internet access 'cause the cable's down too. We miss his comments on the blog!

Framed by early Christmas cards and a birthday card of The Babe's lookalike that we give Tuck every year, he pauses in his observations for a little introspection.

Excerpts from that imail conversation:

She: I went into a convenience store to buy some bread, and they were SOLD OUT! The store looked like a Soviet grocery. Nothing on any of the shelves. I crossed the bridge to Newburyport, and the local White Hen Pantry was BULGING with wares. Panic is an awful thing.

We: Bush's fault! Obama will fix it. Why can't we just make him president NOW?

She: I've heard several people comment, as did you, "Katrina without all the water."

We: Under the radar, though, as I said, since it can't be blamed on GW, and it's just one more inconvenient truth for Al Gore.

She: In NH, where outages may last many days, the reports are that "We can weather this."

We: One of the commenters at TigerHawk was hoping the hardship might drive out the lily-livered Democrats and return NH to its natural red state.

She: NH folks aren't looking for a freebie bailout. I WISH I had bought stock in generators, though. They are FLYING off the shelves. Alaska is the new New Hampshire. The last frontier. Lily livers have invaded, just as bittersweet, bindweed, kudju and others have choked out growth.

Under the dining room table, Tiny searches for the superball that has momentarily bounced away from her grasp.

"Just got a snail call," we i'd back:

We: Dad saying we may not be able to have Christmas up there because it's "such a mess." We could certainly have it here. The tree's all lit up and ready to roll. But here's the GOOD news . . . Chris has just arrived at Goomp's door!

She: Saint Christian has arrived, oil [for the generator] in hand!

We: He is our savior.

She: The new anointed one, speaking of oil.

We: Chris is exercising his calling as a healer of souls. Has he ever considered the ministry? ;-)

A Miss Moppet Moment: Where did the mouse ball go?

"Storm forces New Englanders to Shelters," says the FoxNews banner as Bret Baier asks a Red Cross representative how much longer it should be before the lights come back on for our suffering friends and neighbors all over New England:

Right now they're saying within the next 48 to 78 hours.

She crouches in preparation for going for the jugular.

The lights across the river from Camelot-by-the-Sea and along Rte 1 are already back on, but Goomp's somewhat remote location may mean his branch of the network has been triaged for later. He does share that part of the grid that supplies the local elementary school, and tomorrow is Monday, so we're thinking Central Maine Power may well intend to get things up and running in time for classes. If they won't do it for Goomp, maybe they'll do it for the children.

Update: We're with Artsy Catsy big time on this one. Forget the children. This one's FOR THE CATS, Carnival of the Cats #248.

Update II: All animals all the time at Modulator's Friday Ark #222.

When the going gets tough, they get out the candles

The Full Cold Moon sets this morning far right just as the salt piles of Eastern Salt across the street pick up the rosy fingers of dawn.

"This is the worst disaster we've faced for decades," says a local mayor in a WBZ-TV Boston interview broadcast this evening. "More than a million homes were left without power," says another. The ice storm snuck in upon our area on cat feet under the radar Thursday night. Our own venerable Down Easter Goomp in York Harbor was among the hundreds of thousands of our fellow New Englanders who've been without power for 48 hours and still counting. He was able to fire up the generator to keep things reasonably warm but was unable to cook or telephone or get online. His cell phone wasn't working, but fortunately, our dear bro and sis, who live about 45 minutes away from the Goompster, both checked in with him this afternoon. It was a great moment to be together for one and all. Family values rule.

Down Chelsea we just got a lot of rain, a fortunate result for us of the heat-island effect of the big city just to our south combined with the heat sink of the ocean to our east. But for so many of our neighbors inland to the west and north along the coast, it has been a Katrina-like period of unrelenting hardship in the face of Mother Nature's wrath. No word from Al Bore Gore. Not really given much news coverage nationally, thanks to the fact that it can't be pinned on George W. Bush, we imagine.

TigerHawk was on the road with his daughter for prep-school interviews in our home town of Exeter, NH and Andover, MA during the worst of it:

Last night, the TH Daughter and I drove from Princeton up to Exeter, New Hampshire, where she will, in theory, interview at a school of great repute later this morning. As everybody who lives in the Northeast can surely imagine, the drive was miserable. It rained, a lot, for the entire six and a half hours. By the time we arrived at the "Inn by the Bandstand" — a cute little bed and breakfast in the center of town — everything other than the salt-covered roads had a brilliant coating of ice.

Now it is a little before six in the morning. I awoke thinking that the room was awfully cold, but then I thought that perhaps that was a New England bed-and-breakfast thing and that there was a very nice comforter on the bed so we had planned for this. Then I realized that the lights on the tiny little Christmas tree by my fireplace were dark, and I thought "huh, I wonder if they are on a timer." Then it occurred to me that the power is out. Moreover, I judge from the temperature of the room and the condition of my computer's battery that the power has been out for several hours.

We were wicked delighted at the way things turned out:

Exeter the school did not have any more power than anywhere else in the region, but a silly inconvenience like no electricity does not shut down a New England boarding school. The admissions office was dark and cold in temperature, but the people inside were bright in attitude and warm in spirit and carrying on with business as usual, but for the winter coats and candles everywhere. I let myself imagine that there was a day when Exeter must have conducted all its admissions interviews by candlelight.

As we wrote in the comments:

My hometown, Exeter, NH. In my day, it was boys only, and said boys were the center of us dreamy-eyed girls' lives.

Wondering whether the weather difference between Exeter and Andover will influence the TH daughter's decision when the two acceptance letters arrive?

Will she choose Andover for its easier clime or Exeter for the challenge of it all?

Bottom line, when the going gets tough, the Exonians don't start mewling and keening and whining for someone to bail them out. When the going gets tough, they get out the candles.

"You always felt proud to be here when you crossed that bridge"

In a horrific scene of Biblical proportions, "dozens of vehicles were scattered and stacked on top of each other amid the rubble" when a major-artery bridge spanning the Mississippi between Minneapolis and St. Paul collapsed yesterday, stranding some commuters "on parts of the bridge that weren't completely in the water"  (Brian Peterson/AP photo)

"Would you have run to the bus? I'll answer for you: yes," writes James Lileks, blogging at the Star Tribune's buzz.mn last evening about that Minneapolis man who survived the fall of the Twin Cities freeway bridge and "then ran to help the kids on the bus":

Most of us would. It’s a remarkable instinct that wells up and kicks in, and it’s something you never expected to experience. As someone said about humans: We’re at our best when things are worst.

"I’ve driven across this bridge every few days for thirty years," notes Lileks in a touching tribute to the bridge that was:

There are bridges, and there are bridges; this one had the most magnificent view of downtown available, and it’s a miracle I never rear-ended anyone while gawking at the skyline, the old Stone Bridge, the Mississippi. You always felt proud to be here when you crossed that bridge, pleased to live in such a beautiful place. Didn’t matter if it was summer twilight or hard cold winter noon -- Minneapolis always seemed to be standing at attention, posing for a formal portrait. We’ll have that view again -- but it’ll take a generation before it’s no longer tinged with regret and remembrance.

Lileks commenter Foamer reports on the reporters last night:

Coverage seems to be about the same (I was watching Fox until recently) as any major disaster type event -- they basically tell you everything they know in 5 minutes and then repeat that every 10 minutes with inane guessing to fill in the space.

One of the Fox News reporters this morning is saying the impact of the collapse on the life of the Twin Cities is comparable -- in terms of psychological and traffic-circulation trauma -- to the fall of the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan. So far, authorities say there is no evidence of terrorism.

Road crews had been repaving travel lanes and replacing rails when the bottom fell out. As Minneapolitan Captain Ed writes, "We joke out here that we have two seasons, winter and Road Construction. The ravages of ice, snow, gravel and salt have to be remedied on a regular basis. That kind of work would almost certainly not have created the kind of failure we saw today." Instead, something more insidious may have been at play: In 2005 "the bridge had been rated as 'structurally deficient,' which would normally have flagged it for higher-priority maintenance or possibly replacement," notes the Captain, who has a link to a security video that caught the collapse. (Erik S. Steinmetz/AP photo)

"What do you tell your kids?" worries Lileks:

Mine was shaken by the news, because in the mind of a seven-year old, bridges don’t collapse. I imagine she’ll wonder about the other bridges we travel. She’s not alone.

And maybe there's a silver lining in that. Or, more likely, Wretchard's words in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami will apply:

There will be momentary interest, a search for scapegoats and then a gradual return to forgetfulness.

"It's only human to forget -- repress? -- horrific experiences, to move on," we wrote back then:

Those who were there and lived to tell the tale are scarred for life and will never forget. They know it in their bones and will try to warn the world -- of what? Pay attention to your surroundings? Don't take anything for granted? Repent before it's too late? -- with their stories. Locally it will enter the communal lore. But beyond the region, it won't stick. The rest of us out here in the larger world -- who only hear of it, see media images and try in our mind's eye to imagine the horror but then can turn away to the comfort of our everyday lives -- we are the ones in danger of forgetting.

When talking and blogging heads read into this awful event -- and they will read into it -- they will find a perfect metaphor for the vulnerability of the foundations of freedom in this land of the free, where hairline cracks in the nation's belief in itself -- wrought by the relentless ravages of anti-American multiculturalism and political correctness -- are even as we blog being paved over by those who have forgotten that freedom is not free. Fortunately, as Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman is saying in a late-morning news conference, Minnesotans -- both professionals whose job it is to deal with emergencies and everyday citizens who happened to be on the scene -- had learned the lessons of 9/11 and were impressively prepared to roll up their sleeves and deal with yesterday's chilling challenge. More good news for freedom from Miss Kelly, who brings word of what Egyptian-born Italian writer and journalist Magdi Allam calls "the residual hope for Western civilization, which, more than other civilizations, embodies the sacredness of life and personal freedom."

Update: We were just thinking about the old John Greenleaf Whittier Bridge -- opened in 1954 -- that spans the Merrimac River between Newburyport and Amesbury. We'll be crossing it this afternoon on our way down Goomp's. Googling, we found to our surprise that it is scheduled for a $132 million replacement in the winter of 2010/11:

The existing 6-lane bridge will be replaced with a new 8-lane structure matching the existing 8-lane roadway cross section to the south. The bridge will remain open to traffic throughout construction.

"Hope they do a better job than they did on the tunnel," quips Goomp.

Through a lens darkly

Babe goes to the mattresses, where we will soon join him to refresh ourselves after a strenuous day of traveling by mass transit to Boston and back during heavy rains and thunderstorms and spending 3 out of 4 hours at Mass Eye and Ear waiting, waiting, waiting. As Tuck said, "Thank God your time isn't worth anything."

"You'll shoot your eye out," says the mom in "A Christmas Story," and now the wicked awesome doc at Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary informs us the cataract in our right eye is operable and attributable to one or more of the following:

Trauma
Diabetes
Steroids
The aging process.

As we told the old boy, Tuck stopped beating us years ago, we don't have diabetes, and we've never been on steroids. That leaves the aging process. The upside was the doctor's residential sidekick's calling us -- sort of -- "young" . . . Most cataract patients are 10-20 years older than we are, while some are 10-20 years younger . . . He recommended without pressuring us that we get the thing done now while we're still in good health. Gak. Goomp had his cataracts removed, one after the other in succession, about ten years ago and loved the results. The procedure costs $10,000, but for you, with insurance, it's a mere $1,000.

That's where we're at. It's the most successful and most performed operation in the nation, if not the universe, says Doc Matthew F. Gardiner of Mass Eye and Ear. He performs eye surgery every Wednesday and has the elegant hands of a surgeon. They make a small cut, remove the cloudy lens and then insert a new, improved artificial lens. 'Guess it's time to bite the bullet. We could be in a bed on the sixth floor at MEEI by mid August with local anesthesia and intravenous fluids. You go in early morning, have the thing done and then go home that afternoon with a patch over the offending eye and a follow-up appointment the next day. 'Hate the thought of it, but seeing through a glass darkly, as we have been through the right eye of late, is no picnic, especially for a visual artist like ourselves. As Goomp always says, getting old is not for the faint of heart. You could lose an eye, but the success rate is 95%.

This morning as we were preparing to resew a button on the little robin's-egg-blue linen blouse we intended to wear to our appointment, we had a horrifying We-R-JuJu moment. JuJu was our beloved Grammy, Mummy's mother who thought the sun rose and set on her little Sissikins up until we hit puberty. In her later years -- she lived to be 92 -- Grammy used to ask us to thread needles for her so she could mend this and that. Her eyesight was fading, so she couldn't see well enough to thread them herself. This morning we found ourselves unable to thread a needle to resew a button on that little linen blouse . . . 'Had to ask Tuck to do it for us. Sigh.