Tag: storms

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.”

Roy T. Bennett

“All is as if the world did cease to exist. The city’s monuments go unseen, its past unheard, and its culture slowly fading in the dismal sea.”

Nathan Reese Maher

“We live in a world that is beyond our control, and life is in a constant flux of change. So we have a decision to make: keep trying to control a storm that is not going to go away or start learning how to live within the rain.”

Glenn Pemberton

“In some literature, I’ve read, weather is used as a metaphor. The darker and stormier the weather outside the more diabolical the deeds done. When the clouds roll away, however, the rain has washed away all the blood in the streets and the world is clean and new again, as if all the violence and destruction of the storm served a divine purpose.”

Benjamin R. Smith


NAVIGATING THROUGH THE STORMS

Several weeks ago I had to drive west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to pick up my son after his sophomore year at Penn State. I’ve made this trip a dozen times over the last few years, since this is my second son attending Penn State, with a third starting in the Fall. It’s a tedious, boring, protracted, four hour trek through the rural countryside of the Keystone State. During these trips my mind wanders, making connections between the landscape and the pressing issues facing the world. I can’t help but get lost in my thoughts as the miles accumulate like dollars on the national debt clock.

More often than not I end up making the trip in the midst of bad weather. And this time was no different. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is a meandering, decades old, dangerous, mostly two lane highway for most of its 360 mile span. Large swaths of the decaying interstate are under construction, as the narrative about lack of infrastructure spending is proven false by visual proof along the highways and byways of America.

Continue reading “NAVIGATING THROUGH THE STORMS”

Empty Shelves and Madness: A Minor Winter Storm Drove People Into “Panic Buying of Food And Basics”

Guest Post by Mac Slavo

Can you picture empty store shelves?

A couple of weeks ago, in early January, there was a relatively minor storm in the South and Southeast U.S. Cold weather, threat of the power going out, snow and ice and empty store shelves.

This wasn’t the big one. And yet it was enough to bring things to a panic.

If this is how people react to an extreme cold spell, then what happens when something major hits?

With about two months of winter to go, it is the kind of routine disturbance that is likely to happen again without much ado. A much more severe storm may come as well.

Shortages, and ill prepared people scrambling about for the final available resources. The angry race to the checkout line probably elicited road rage, fights and arguments… the storm that is brought out in people poses perhaps an even larger threat than the natural disaster, etc. itself.

Continue reading “Empty Shelves and Madness: A Minor Winter Storm Drove People Into “Panic Buying of Food And Basics””