I'm not going to brag or boast about the institutional responses to the challenges and aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene for two reasons. I had nothing to do with anyone of them. And, depending on where you live, across the Northeast, the state of Connecticut or even in the various villages that comprise the city of Norwich, your mileage may vary (and vary wildly).
For some, in my neighborhood as an example, we were without power for slightly less than eight hours, an eternity in today's impatient world, but far shorter than others elsewhere who went without for closer to a week or more.
To some extent, I'm wary of praising the day before the evening arrives and we have a long hurricane season before us and then, to follow that, what I will sincerely hope does not (again) become the winter of our discontent. Let's face it, we have more than enough challenges (hard to chew and tough to swallow) on our plates right now without calling out Nature to step off, bitch.
Rather, what I wanted to note in more than just passing fashion, was the enlarged sense of community we felt towards one another in the face of a not always easy meteorological encounter. So often, so many of us (and sometimes we can also say 'too often, too many of us') regard government at every level and corporate entities at many levels as some kind of a laugh less punchline punctuating an unfunny prank of which we became the victim.
Not so this time. We had, I admit, the advantage of some warning and advance planning and not just as in the usual 'go to the market, buy toilet paper and milk' preparation. I'm not mocking that routine-heck I do it, too, and I'm lactose intolerant (vice having terminal contact dermatitis).
Local and state officials together with utility operators and the telecommunications companies et al, pulled together assets most of us didn't realize we had, just in case 'nice to have' became 'need to use.' Which is exactly what happened.
Here in Norwich, there was a reverse phone tree of sorts, where an automated system called those of us with land lines to advise us to stay off the streets once we achieved Storm Force Stupid and for the most part we did. We didn't chew up a lot of energy second guessing the men and women on the trucks who started clearing away the trees and fixing the power lines even before the rains had slowed, or berate their leadership who had dispatched them.
We didn't expect things to go south and then wait for our worst fears to be realized. We had, or at least displayed, confidence that those whose jobs it was to repair and replace those things needing one or the other, were doing so as best and as fast as they could. And they did.
We allowed those who had the training and skills to do the (SLJ) necessary dirty jobs to go ahead and do them without kvetching about the mud they were tracking in from the backyard or how they weren't going fast enough to suit us (whoever does, I wonder).
Norwich, big enough to be able to marshall reasonable resources in advance of Irene, was still small enough to take care of those of us who live here in rapid order and be able to lend a hand to neighboring communities in all directions who had struggles a bit larger than they could manage.
If each of us can remember the extra ounce of patience, the additional moment of consideration for someone other than ourselves and the confidence that "we" would get through this, and carry that mindset into our everyday lives, whether it's about a local economic development issue, a state wide educational initiative or the next national policy debate we have with one another, then the violence of Tropical Storm Irene will have improved who we are and how we get along with one another.
-bill kenny
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