No Business like Snow Business

In light of all the snow up and down the Eastern Seaboard (and beyond) in the last ten days, I didn't realize I needed to be monitoring anything other than the Weather Channel. I confess to spending about thirty seconds, regardless of the time of year, checking current conditions and forecasts--I guess I'm a fatalist, I mean seriously what can I do about the snow, or the windchill factor aside from dress accordingly?

The Financial Times had a story in Thursday's edition about how the mayoral career of Adrian Fenty may actually disappear faster than the accumulated snowfall that has choked Washington D.C.. When you say our nation's capital, I think cherry blossoms, tidal basin, Marion "The Laws of Gravity are Racist" Barry, rather than snowmobiles and half pipes. But from the footage I watched starting last weekend, that's what they've been dealing with in The District.

I've been a tourist in D.C. many times, though, frankly not in recent years and I'd be the first one to concede that I suspect when many of us think of "Washington", we see the Reflecting Pool which may, or may not, be an accurate reflection on the (about) six hundred thousand people who live in our nation's capital.

Anyway, the white stuff seems for the most part to have pretty much stayed where it laid from the time it dropped from the sky. When you look at the history of snowfall in the region, the argument could be made, the public works department has the right number of trucks and plows and salters, except, of course, this year none of the past is true.

Had someone set out three years ago to purchase gear, claiming some prescient sense of the impending, he'd have been smacked with a hockey stick. So people are angry in D.C. because the Mayor, like themselves, didn't guess that this year would be freakishly different. How dare he?

As if those who live in The District didn't have enough to put up with on a daily basis, the tidal wave of Federal Government employees and members of the legislative branch arriving every morning as relentless as the rain (if only it were!), the ever growing circles of shortened supplies of goods and services, now we've created a Jack London landscape that only White Fang could love.

All under the unblinking eye of 24/7 cable news operations waiting to do a cradle to the grave multi-part series on the next plow-driver who lowers the blade on the truck and kicks up a spark on Pennsylvania Avenue. C'mon Spring!
-bill kenny