What with all this global warming this year, the South End\u2019s been inundated with snowstorms, monsoons, windstorms and bad craziness \u2013 all of it culminating in power outages that last for days.\u00a0 The neighbors who didn\u2019t snowbird it to Phoenix or Baja are about half deranged breathing generator fumes and cursing the PUD, the government, God and the day they retired to a backwash like South Camano.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I try to reassure em, being the Good Samaritan I am.\u00a0 I tell em about the good old days where we lost the Grid for even longer, even more often.\u00a0 I tell em how the missuz came to my love shack in \u201981 in a raging storm.\u00a0 Power out, trees down, tide lashing the beach, practically had to cut our way home to a dark shack she\u2019d, fortunately, never set eyes on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I tell em, think romantic.\u00a0 Think oil lamps and candlelight, quiet conversation, flickering shadowplay and the haunting strains of a banjo gently weeping.\u00a0 Think, this is how it once was.\u00a0 The wind strumming the fir boughs and the world vibrant and pulsing in a way TV pretty much dulled.\u00a0 Think of that old lovelight rekindled and warming like a cookstove, the dreams rising once again, yeasty and full of glutinous potential.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s how this <\/em>old codger thinks of the South End.\u00a0 And if I have to be reminded of it every storm, every power outage, every candled memory, well, it\u2019s a welcome few days.\u00a0 And Ma and Me, we think of em sort of as anniversaries.\u00a0 Course, after 3 or 4 days, we\u2019re ready for TV.\u00a0 Or divorce.\u00a0 Or maybe just a generator of our own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What with all this global warming this year, the South End\u2019s been inundated with snowstorms, monsoons, windstorms and bad craziness \u2013 all of it culminating in power outages that last for days.\u00a0 The neighbors who didn\u2019t snowbird it to Phoenix or Baja are about half deranged breathing generator fumes and cursing the PUD, the government, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[2392],"class_list":["post-12578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-south-end-global-worry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12579,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12578\/revisions\/12579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}