Weathering
Weather can be entertaining. Weathering is what things do. In line with this a pictuesque thunderstorm came through the DC area last Sunday afternoon An inside view of Sunday's severe weather - Capital Weather Gang. First there was an abrupt darkening, then plenty of wind but no rain immediately.The wind kept increasing steadily Then rain started seemingly late to the game but hard and driven. The wind already in full thunderstorm strength, suddenly picks up into another entire level of intensity. It was like nothing I could recall. Branches and entire trees elongating and straightening out. Reminding me absurdly of nothing so much as those elastic rubber bands bracelets that are shaped like sharks, gorillas (or trees) when relaxed but pull out into a line when streatched. I realized that the winds must be topping out at 60 mph or more. This wind drove into a savage sustained whistleing gust, the sky suddenly filled with debris. Trees began to visiblbly shed parts. The heavy rain drops were ripped apart into clouds of chaotic spray. It did not seem like the wind was blowing as much as that thre was a giant vacuum somewhere sucking everything into it. When it finally let go the rain fell straight down for a moment. Then it picked up again, less strongly. Noticibly the wind was now blowing the rain in the opposite direction. The idea of a tornado briefly went through my thoughts, but thunderstorms have a strong central down-draft from which the winds splay out which would also account for this Thunderstorm - Wikipedia. A short but lively thunder and lightning portion to the storm followed this, somewhat of an anticlimax and reduntant as well. A quick look around confirmed that the power had gone out during the wind earlier, and for nearly 400,000 other people as well. It stayed out for the next thirty-nine hours. Longer than that for my sister Susan's family over in Montgomery county. This meant two nights in the dark with no tv, no internet Just a couple of books and a transister radio. It begs the question of how many candles does it take to read comfortably by, and what makes a good power outage candle. The first night was Sunday and providentially this is the day of the week when Ed Walker veteran Washington DJ issues a collection of radio serials from the thirties, forties and fifties The Big Broadcast on WAMU 88.5. The line-up Sunday 25 July 2010, included five half hour crime dramas, a Gunsmoke, all culminating in an Orson Welles production of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" from 1939. The story telling was a little rough around the edges, but the form and gimmicks were recognizible, it was perfectly entertaining. Television is only a incremental advance on radio. Monday: no radio serials, only WTOP news time. I light up the candles when it gets dark. Cruelly this was after being at work and having power and internet all day. I have two camping type candle lanterns. It had been apparent from the day before that reading is more than a two candle-power endeavor. I rig two more, exhausting my supply of candles. The next problem is the book, Norman Cantor's Antiquity [Antiquity : from the birth of Sumerian civilization to the fall of the Roman Empire] The previous chapter on Rome had been engaging, even fun. He had now turned to St. Augustine's, employing a dialogue technique to keep it moving along. Nothing really renders Augustine into light reading though. I eventually turn to some narrative fiction "City of Glass" for a while before calling it an early evening. The power outage also kept me off the internet, even though my phone worked and the laptop has a five hour battery, the dsl box needs electricity. This interferred with identifing and repairing a problem with the weblog where it rewrote a controlling XML file back to an unusable default. Even though I had solved this problem several months ago, Somehow I had neglected to write down or make a back-up of how this file ought to look. It took having the power back on and an evening of trial and era before I got it right. Now once again the electrons flow out to the sea like the waters of the mighty Potomac.
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