Snowflakes Win Hands Down Over Humans This Year

February 28, 2015

The winter has been miserably cold this year in South Eastern Ontario. It hasn’t been a week or two of frigid weather, then back to a winter as we know it. It has been one cold snap after another, with hopefully a day or two of reprieve! As a Kingstonian, some of the city snowbanks are about six feet high. As a Canadian Great Laker, I’m already at the Canadian/American borderline. If one could move further south, why wouldn’t you seriously consider it! As I get older, I can understand why the “snowbird” migration might grow as a movement. It’s in our bones to do so, and in our demographics to grow over these next 20 years.

Some people use media spin, as a tool, to demean or minimize global weather changes, or advocate its existence and impact. Funny, how there is a disparity between those able to manipulate human impact on our earth habitat, and those affected by that impact. We are seemingly transitioning class-ism to a simpler or more polarized model – “haves” vs. “have-nots”. It’s an over-simplification of climate change and human movement in such a finite space of Earth, but still an observation, in my opinion.

I guess if the hurricanes, tornadoes, extreme weather patterns, etc., are becoming more frequent in your geo-location, it is best to move to a more humanely desirable place, before our herd-like kind descends… otherwise you may risk facing a new financial/economic component, as those market prices rise, in an inevitable demand.

On those evenings and nights when we are hibernating, here are a few interesting reads: Jane Jacobs, “Dark Age Ahead”, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, “Systems of Survival”, “Cities and the Wealth of Nations”; Ronald Wright, “An Illustrated Short History of Progress”, “What is America?”, and for those who enjoy added intrigue, “Stolen Continents” (as we consider environmental refugees & migration patterns to more humane environments). I would throw in author Maude Barlow, as she speaks out about the scarcity of fresh water, with a growing human population, but that’s another chapter.

As Canadians, we also watched the hurricane speed storms hit the Eastern Seaboard, and the Maritimes these past couple of years. I was able to see FEMA’s participation in part of that recovery. There was joy in seeing the anecdotes unfold, as one human reached out to another, but there wasn’t enough at the collective level. It is disappointing to note, even in this day and age (as two solid members of the G20 nations), how we brag we have it all in our dogma of “democracy”. Why are we leaving so many people behind? This already precludes nations, who aren’t able to recover within their own GDP. Many of us, within our own country’s borders, may be or will be in the next wave, to go down in “unrecoverable” situations. It’s not “just” a geological series of winter storms anymore!

I wrote much of this, as a response to a blogger I follow in Maryland, as he writes about Washington D.C. – John Hayden. (He is a journalist; he claims retired status; but really, the pen and ink are still flowing!) All of us are more or less experiencing the same Nor’ Easters or Clippers hitting the continent’s east side. We will see March’s “in like a lamb or lion” tomorrow. The Almanac findings for Groundhog’s Day are pretty much fodder for the wood-stove this winter! I think snowflakes win hands down over the humans this year!