The Weather Hostage–Day Two…?

By Roger L Simon

I in no way wish to compare my/our fate to the real hostages of Gaza, so I hesitated to use the word in my headline. Sheryl is currently reading about them in Eli Sharabi’s powerful “Hostage.”

But it couldn’t find a more appropriate word for the way I am feeling, trapped in our house in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, with no power and consequently no heat. Internet connections are sketchy, and there is obviously no TV. The gas, thankfully, is working.

According to the Nashville Electric Service (NES), about 175,000 customers are without power, and about 109 poles are broken. 300 additional lineworkers are supposed to be deployed midday.

I am typing this at a temperature I estimate to be in the mid-thirties, while staring out my home office window at an icy scene, where my cellphone shows the temperature is 15 degrees. No cars are traveling along the street because the black ice has made it too treacherous.

A single man, now disappeared, was trudging tentatively down the hill along the side of the road, sticking to the snowy side and measuring every step to be sure he wouldn’t slip and fall. I tried walking out onto my patio yesterday to check the HVAC, but couldn’t venture more than a foot without crampons, which I don’t have. My old Gore-Tex boots didn’t grab.

Horrible—and yet there is knowledge to be gained.

Jim in Alaska, a frequent commenter on this Substack, wrote on my previous article that, where he lives, this seemed almost tropical. I’m sure that’s true. People deal with all kinds of extreme weather. But they are prepared and don’t have to deal with black ice, a devil especially prevalent in the American South.

I could say, too, that local authorities are not prepared for this dastardly ice that comes along every few years. But then no one knows when they are going to come, and almost every, scratch the almost, every area on the planet is at one time or another subject to the vicissitudes of nature. This shouldn’t negate preparation, however.

What you really learn in situations like this is patience, to try to be calm and make intelligent decisions. I’m not sure I’m particularly good at that. And at the moment, there aren’t many choices but to wait for the power to come on and watch your food and energy supplies, meaning don’t use up too much battery power too quickly.

So I will lose this out here. Also, my fingers are too cold to type.

Maybe I will take a tentative, very short walk outside. It’s eerily beautiful, accent on the eerily.