Locos on the Local Reservation

A few feet of flooding during a bad storm was the norm in the basement of my house growing up on Long Island (my parents just got this fixed as one of their newly retired home improvement projects). Now, however, any water gathering in any form larger than a puddle is a calamity, got it.

The "flooding" already being reported for NY is pretty minor--in stark contrast to North Carolina, which I am hearing nothing about comparatively in the lamestream. But it's like people's brains, encouraged by the ratings-churning or truly informative? media and, for some, a desire to catastrophize that I will never understand, go right to images of people wading through the flood water outside New Orleans after Katrina. YES, this is exactly the same.

Look, even if it grows, this impetus to panic? Helps no one. The best thing I did for myself during various crises was to make staying calm a priority, a tough sell to the current NYC crowd, if the last two years have shown me anything.

It's odd how the suburbanites here have become more relaxed and less high-strung than the city residents (talk about role reversal). Imagine if Californians flipped out and started treating every fire, an also-annual event, as if it was the worst inferno ever and I think my local reservations become a bit clearer...