Sipsey Street Irregulars: Snowmageddon in Birmingham

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Snowmageddon in Birmingham

It's Snowmageddon in Birmingham

Snow continues to fall and the temperature on the back deck is 18 degrees and falling. Not expected to get above freezing until Thursday.

As a transplanted Wolverine who grew up in Ohio I have always been a bit amused at the southern reaction to the first snowflake of impending winter precipitation. Rarely do we see the sorts of real blizzards that I grew up with, although the mere rumor of snow is worth quadruple sales of bread and milk to local grocers. (This is not, of course, restricted to the south. In 1979, if I recall correctly, I watched two big guys get into a fist fight over the last gallon of milk in a Kroger store on Dublin-Granville Road in Columbus OH. While they were duking it out, a little rabbity guy snuck in and grabbed the milk. A cop "arrested" them both, but then had to let them go, much the worse for wear, because there was no way to transport them downtown.)

Now however we have an unexpected winter weather emergency here in Birmingham and the town is shut down with tens of thousands stuck on roads blocked by accidents. Rosey left her work two hours ago with a friend and I still haven't seen her from what is normally a twenty-five minute drive. I left to go to the post office and had to turn around at the end of our street because there are two cars in the ditch where it comes out on a county road. In turning around, I barely made it back up the driveway with my bald tires (after the third try).

Just got a call from Hannah who informs me that after an hour she just now made it out of the parking lot at her work on Birmingham's south side. That only took her an hour. If I see her by dark it will be a minor miracle.

Keep all us silly southerners in your prayers. We're going to need them.

6 comments:

Da Curly Wolf said...: we call it iceapocalypse TWO, here in Houston. So far? meh..I'm singularly unimpressed; January 28, 2014 at 1:11 PM
Anonymous said...: I know, let's get in the car and see how bad the roads are! Take some beers too!; January 28, 2014 at 4:07 PM
Anonymous said...: I'm willing to cut our southern breathern some slack. Y'all only rarely face this sort of weather so being "armed for it" is a waste of public resources. OTOH, some individual gear that's simple/cheap/durable can be stored long term. Tire chains f'r instance. Any sort of shovel, kitty litter, road flares and some simple "survival" gear like water, energy bars, space blankets can be added to any vehicle when threatening weather looms.

But, then, how many of us "northers" do it ? >Jeff; January 28, 2014 at 4:19 PM
Anonymous said...: Dang - We NEED some Global Warming!

Make me wonder why we ever downsized away from 7 liter V8s

Burn, Baby. Burn!

III; January 28, 2014 at 7:21 PM
Anonymous said...: In the Colorado blizzard of 1981, I witnessed two gals duke it out over the last roll of toilet paper in the store.
So ridiculous it was funny!; January 28, 2014 at 8:07 PM
Anonymous said...: Sorry, can't help now, in July let me know the tire size, I'll see if I have anything laying around. July is family reunion time.; January 29, 2014 at 9:23 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Snowmageddon in Birmingham

6 comments:

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