Snow

So now they’re naming snow storms; give it a name and market it, give it a name and weave a “narrative” and sell advertising. It is sad to see the word “narrative” descend into political spin and marketing hype, it cheapens its historical roots, its philosophical and theological import – peoples used to live within narratives and cultic myths (in the academic sense of the terms) and those narratives provided frameworks for living and a sense of the past, the present, and the future. Now a narrative can last all of five seconds, spin a story just long enough for the public to forget the political or moral scandal, milk a snow storm for all it’s worth until the next weather “event” appears on the horizon.

When we lived in Massachusetts I had an acquaintance whose son was a sports commentator; I recall my acquaintance telling me that when his son was preparing to broadcast a game that he and the broadcast team worked on developing a narrative for the game, a storyline. The game itself was no longer enough, it needed a narrative to sustain it. When Vickie and I watch sports we know that there are two types of play-by-play and “color” announcers – those who focus on the game and those who talk about everything but the game – we look for the announcers who focus on the game.

How did generations live without snow storms being named? Next year there will be trading cards depicting snow storms with statistics printed on the back. The following year a Snow Storm Hall of Fame will open in North Dakota to rival the Hurricane Hall of Fame in Miami, Florida and the Tornado Hall of Fame in Norman, Oklahoma and the Nor’easter Hall of Fame in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.   

Actually I wanted to write about a couple of other things regarding snow, I wanted to write about Isaiah and Darby, but the keyboard seems to have taken me away on another narrative – I’ll be back with Darby and Isaiah in (hopefully) the next post.