Monday, April 16, 2007
Rain of Terror
As a graduate student, my normal weekend routine is not particularly exciting and rarely varies significantly from those weekdays when I have between zero and one seminars to attend. Wake up, shower, get dressed, quick breakfast and then pack up my reading for the day and head over to the library to slam through several hundred pages of historical analysis. Emerge a few hours later, go home, eat dinner. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But not this weekend. No, this weekend, I changed things up and brought all of my work home. Why? Because I had heard news of a potential rain storm and rather than slosh through puddles and end up having to dry my socks on a study room radiator, I decided to hole up and ride out the storm. And lucky I did too, because this was a doozy. The entire back yard of the Invisible Commune has turned into a very large puddle or a very small lake depending on one's point of reference.
Granted, it's not exactly the most thrilling story to tell about a Sunday. (I spent all day reading about the development of anthropology and the use of technology to establish colonial empires. Oh, and I showered!) But, sometimes I think it's better not to have a slightly more sedate weekend. Sure, I could have been like one of my classmates and had an exciting story about how an excursion to a nearby city which would normally be a three hour drive ended up being a nine hour ordeal thanks to frequent traffic jams, flooding, and route closures. Or the fun one undergraduate had in a lecture I sit in on...her flight was forced to land at an alternate airport due to the weather and then the rail lines home were flooded! Miserable stuff. As my professor joked in lecture today, with all the main roads in or out of campus, Old Ivy was, for all intents and purposes an island. And indeed, non-essential personnel were told not to come in today.
And yes, despite my minimal contributions, I am apparently part of the university's essential personnel.
But it was weird walking to class today. Shops had signs on their windows announcing they were either closed or opening late. The local library closed its doors on account of the weather. Did I mention there was snow? Or at least it was snow until it melted on contact with the ground. I love April.
They say the sun will come out on Thursday, and frankly, I say it's about time. Not that I mind a little bit of rain, especially when I can just stay curled up in bed or read a book in my recliner. But the lack of effective drainage and my distaste for wet socks mean that tramping about around campus is a lot less pleasant after a particularly heavy deluge...and I think this qualifies.
Postscript: My complaints about the weather were meant to be lighthearted and frivolous, but I feel I would be remiss if I did not at least mention the tragic events at Virginia Tech this afternoon. Although the full details of today's shooting, the deadliest such incident in American history, have not yet been revealed, it is frightening to consider that such violence can take place anywhere in this country, much less on a college campus. I heard the news before attending a department-wide meeting, but the full impact didn't set in until afterwards when I went to the library and read the news reports online. And I sat there, stunned, in the computer lab on the library's basement floor, realizing that it could just as well have happened at any other campus. I wondered then, and still do now, what kind of a world we have made where tragedies like this can happen and what historians looking back on what happened in Virginia today will say about our society and its values. For my part, I have no idea of what those future textbooks will include, though I'd be willing to bet they won't give a damn about the weather. There are more significant things to consider than a little bit of rain.
As a graduate student, my normal weekend routine is not particularly exciting and rarely varies significantly from those weekdays when I have between zero and one seminars to attend. Wake up, shower, get dressed, quick breakfast and then pack up my reading for the day and head over to the library to slam through several hundred pages of historical analysis. Emerge a few hours later, go home, eat dinner. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But not this weekend. No, this weekend, I changed things up and brought all of my work home. Why? Because I had heard news of a potential rain storm and rather than slosh through puddles and end up having to dry my socks on a study room radiator, I decided to hole up and ride out the storm. And lucky I did too, because this was a doozy. The entire back yard of the Invisible Commune has turned into a very large puddle or a very small lake depending on one's point of reference.
Granted, it's not exactly the most thrilling story to tell about a Sunday. (I spent all day reading about the development of anthropology and the use of technology to establish colonial empires. Oh, and I showered!) But, sometimes I think it's better not to have a slightly more sedate weekend. Sure, I could have been like one of my classmates and had an exciting story about how an excursion to a nearby city which would normally be a three hour drive ended up being a nine hour ordeal thanks to frequent traffic jams, flooding, and route closures. Or the fun one undergraduate had in a lecture I sit in on...her flight was forced to land at an alternate airport due to the weather and then the rail lines home were flooded! Miserable stuff. As my professor joked in lecture today, with all the main roads in or out of campus, Old Ivy was, for all intents and purposes an island. And indeed, non-essential personnel were told not to come in today.
And yes, despite my minimal contributions, I am apparently part of the university's essential personnel.
But it was weird walking to class today. Shops had signs on their windows announcing they were either closed or opening late. The local library closed its doors on account of the weather. Did I mention there was snow? Or at least it was snow until it melted on contact with the ground. I love April.
They say the sun will come out on Thursday, and frankly, I say it's about time. Not that I mind a little bit of rain, especially when I can just stay curled up in bed or read a book in my recliner. But the lack of effective drainage and my distaste for wet socks mean that tramping about around campus is a lot less pleasant after a particularly heavy deluge...and I think this qualifies.
Postscript: My complaints about the weather were meant to be lighthearted and frivolous, but I feel I would be remiss if I did not at least mention the tragic events at Virginia Tech this afternoon. Although the full details of today's shooting, the deadliest such incident in American history, have not yet been revealed, it is frightening to consider that such violence can take place anywhere in this country, much less on a college campus. I heard the news before attending a department-wide meeting, but the full impact didn't set in until afterwards when I went to the library and read the news reports online. And I sat there, stunned, in the computer lab on the library's basement floor, realizing that it could just as well have happened at any other campus. I wondered then, and still do now, what kind of a world we have made where tragedies like this can happen and what historians looking back on what happened in Virginia today will say about our society and its values. For my part, I have no idea of what those future textbooks will include, though I'd be willing to bet they won't give a damn about the weather. There are more significant things to consider than a little bit of rain.
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