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Ah, the evolution of the public mood! Remember last Wednesday, when we all had a good laugh at the schools' reliance on infamously inaccurate weathermen to shut down schools, giving all the kids a snow day with no snow? The jovial mood that first night of heavy snow-fall, as the kids turned streets into luges, goodwill was in air, and the spirits were flowing freely? Wasn't all that nice?
As the mood all over Seattle darkens with the approach of Christmas and the not-so-slowly unfolding disaster wrought by what's politely referred to as "inclement" weather, all that snickering glee, to say nothing of the city-wide sense of relief that Saturday's bus accident didn't end in tragedy, has given way to a shared feeling across the Emerald City that we're all screwed.
The transportation situation is in chaos. As one friend, currently on his way there to retrieve his daughter from her delayed flight, put it, "Sea-Tac is the Superdome." According to AP reports, only "a quarter of all scheduled flights are getting out," with at least 3,000 people sleeping at the airport, including soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, swamping Sea-Tac's tiny USO. Hotels are booked solid. Buses and trains are likewise shut down, stranding hundreds if not thousands more. Highways are dangerous if not impassable, car rentals are through-the-roof if available at all, and rides to Portland are going for $125 and up on Craigslist.
Metro buses are only operating on half their routes, and their website has been overwhelmed and unresponsive for almost 30 minutes (here's a theoretically up-to-date list of bus cancellations and re-routes). Roofs are collapsing left and right, and no one much seems to know what the hell's going on.
In a sign of deepening incompetence on the part of the fearless local leaders trying to respond, this morning we were forwarded a report from KOMO that starts: "After a day stuck in a downtown bus terminal, Greyhound officials took a load of stranded passengers to a homeless shelter at the Seattle Center, but officials there turned the passengers away because the shelter does not take children." Brilliant! According to the P-I, "Eric Wessley, a spokesman for Greyhound, said Seattle police told them they could take passengers to the shelter."
So kudos all around--the city's a giant clusterfuck due to some snow. Do we here at Seattlest have anything to add? Not really, we're just as screwed as everyone else. All we can do is to urge everyone to (a) take caution, particularly when driving, both for their own sake and others,' and (b) to try out best to live up to the sentimental tripe we're fed every year in old Christmas movies, about how the holiday is about our better selves and giving freely and helping our fellow man, and see what all of you can do to help someone else out. It's just over 48 hours till Christmas Eve, when a lot of people stuck here in this frigid, slushy, chaotic city were hoping to be somewhere else entirely. A lot of families will be separated, a lot of Christmases ruined, and a lot of money wasted and time spent suffering on cold benches in train depots and bus stations and airport terminals, waiting for connections that won't come in time.
Every year, someone (usually Macy's, in a newspaper ad) reprints a 111-year-old newspaper editorial from The New York Sun, responding to an eight-year-old girl's letter to the editor asking, "Is there a Santa Claus?" It's typical Christmas ad kitsch, that's supposed to be all warm and fuzzy and about the goodness of the season and yadda yadda yadda. But this year, we say, screw it. Screw Santa Claus. Forget that crap. You can help someone else out in this time of need, as old acquaintances come out of the wood-work in need of rides, or the children of friends-of-friends wind up stuck in an airport with no hope of finding a connect, and as shelters overflow with not just the cold and needy but the poor bastards the idiotic transportation providers just didn't to deal with anymore. So do your part; you've got 48 hours to figure out how to help someone else. Remember, we're all in this together.
Mosstheman47 brings you a pic of "western and 99ish" courtesy of the Seattlest Flickr pool.
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At the very least, those with shovels could offer loan of them. It's a theme I see all over the blogosphere: people w/ no access to shovels because the stores sold out. Those with shovels are out there somewhere!
I don't know--I'm seeing things improve. Currently, it's not snowing, the sun is out, and...it's not snowing. For the first time in days I'm starting to think I might actually make it out of town for the holidays instead of spending them holed up and roasting the cats over charcoal in my living room.
On of our neighbors opened their house to the neighborhood and invited everyone over for dinner. They made a ton of food and entertained about 20 people. I look forward to hearing a bunch of stories similar to this.
I've got a regular square-nose shovel and no school to go teach at today if anyone's near Greenwood and 85th and wants a hand.
^ That was me this weekend as well. I made homemade jalapeno latkes with horseradish crema for the people I hosted. We played Christmas trivia and had a snowball fight in the middle of Pine Street downtown and offered steaming Gluhwein to the good street musicians. And yelled carols with all the Santa Claus clones that for some reason wandered drunk from the Triple Door.
Norman Rockwell eat your heart out.
Here's one way that most of us are *not* screwed at present--the electricity floweth! Unlike the storm from hell of 2006, this storm (or series of storms?) doesn't seem to have knocked out power to thousands. Or maybe I just missed that headline?
In any case, if you dig deep enough, there's stuff to be thankful for. Now back to your regularly scheduled doom and gloom.