I really envy this. When I was Frederick's age it used to snow seriously every winter, and about every five winters you'd have a real blizzard. The good news about this was that you didn't have to go to school. Or, almost equally exciting, you went to school, spent all the breaks sliding or playing snowball fights, and then had to fight your way back home through drifts. I still remember some occasion or other when I went home with my mother (who was a teacher at the same school as I was a pupil) and we fought our way through the drifts together. I still retain a conviction that it was I who saved the day by showing her how to do it. (I would be about 10 at the time.)
The most famous blizzard was in 1947 when I was six. We have photos of me touching the light on a street lamp, the snow was so high. I can just remember playing in drifts, digging tunnels and so on. The snow went on for weeks. As a history teacher I know that the resulting economic crisis more or less put paid to the British Empire: we had bankrupted ourselves winning the Second World War (mostly by borrowing from the US, which then sternly demanded repayment, completed only a couple of years ago) and were being progressively ground down because defeated Germany had to be fed otherwise they would all have starved. 1947 finished us off. In 1948 we withdrew from most of our empire (with the US applauding vigorously from the sidelines, having organised the whole thing).
Nowadays it's the US that has an empire and is exploiting it as vigorously as we did ours then. Who is going to force them to withdraw from it, I wonder?
My prediction is that the U.S. will slowly collapse like a flan in a cupboard. Of course, that will mean the suffering of millions, but what is the entire course of human history but suffering? And aren't the best history books filled with grisly descriptions of the worst events?
When Simon and I were in L.A. we lived through that massive 4 a.m. earthquake that smashed pretty much everything breakable and expensive that we owned. A few hours later, our close friend Greg walked over to exchange survival stories. He was living in a very rickety building then and, though not the nervous sort being from San Francisco, said that when the shaking started, he was certain that this was the end and grabbed ahold of his futon and prepared himself for a wild ride. That image has stuck with me and it is what helps me deal with living in Flint, the open wound that shows all that is wrong with this country.
3 comments:
He certainly looks remarkably happy in it.
xM
I really envy this. When I was Frederick's age it used to snow seriously every winter, and about every five winters you'd have a real blizzard. The good news about this was that you didn't have to go to school. Or, almost equally exciting, you went to school, spent all the breaks sliding or playing snowball fights, and then had to fight your way back home through drifts. I still remember some occasion or other when I went home with my mother (who was a teacher at the same school as I was a pupil) and we fought our way through the drifts together. I still retain a conviction that it was I who saved the day by showing her how to do it. (I would be about 10 at the time.)
The most famous blizzard was in 1947 when I was six. We have photos of me touching the light on a street lamp, the snow was so high. I can just remember playing in drifts, digging tunnels and so on. The snow went on for weeks. As a history teacher I know that the resulting economic crisis more or less put paid to the British Empire: we had bankrupted ourselves winning the Second World War (mostly by borrowing from the US, which then sternly demanded repayment, completed only a couple of years ago) and were being progressively ground down because defeated Germany had to be fed otherwise they would all have starved. 1947 finished us off. In 1948 we withdrew from most of our empire (with the US applauding vigorously from the sidelines, having organised the whole thing).
Nowadays it's the US that has an empire and is exploiting it as vigorously as we did ours then. Who is going to force them to withdraw from it, I wonder?
My prediction is that the U.S. will slowly collapse like a flan in a cupboard. Of course, that will mean the suffering of millions, but what is the entire course of human history but suffering? And aren't the best history books filled with grisly descriptions of the worst events?
When Simon and I were in L.A. we lived through that massive 4 a.m. earthquake that smashed pretty much everything breakable and expensive that we owned. A few hours later, our close friend Greg walked over to exchange survival stories. He was living in a very rickety building then and, though not the nervous sort being from San Francisco, said that when the shaking started, he was certain that this was the end and grabbed ahold of his futon and prepared himself for a wild ride. That image has stuck with me and it is what helps me deal with living in Flint, the open wound that shows all that is wrong with this country.
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