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Delight for schoolkids and lawyers alike as perfect storm hits home.
My daughter’s definition of a perfect storm is not the commonly understood meaning of a confluence of downside risks all materialising at the same time. Rather, since we moved to the US, her “perfect storm” is an overnight snow dump sufficient to meet the criteria to close schools on a day that then dawns bright and sunny. Happily for her, that is exactly what happened last week. And at home, I had prepared for this by buying in cupcakes. An excellent day all around.
Not quite so the following day, when a friend and I took the train to Philadelphia – about two hours north of Washington DC – to see the sights and attend an evening concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra. We arrived for the tail end of the same snowstorm that had closed schools at home. All day it snowed lightly and was -6°C, except for the periods when it snowed more heavily.
We were well dressed yet, walking outside most of the day, we froze. At one point, we were walking up one of the main streets in Philadelphia’s CBD, Market St, and saw ahead that the road was closed for two blocks. This being the US, and me still having the usual prejudices about it, I assumed that either someone had been shot or had run a red light. Sometimes in these parts, things escalate so quickly you can’t tell whether it was a large or small infraction that started it.
But it was neither. In fact, large chunks of ice were occasionally falling from tall office blocks, so the roads had been closed mostly to pedestrians, but in some parts to cars as well.
Just as I was thinking that this was a typical reaction to America’s legendary litigiousness, a large block of ice smashed into smaller chunks on the snowy footpath in front of me. Had the ice struck me, at the very least I would have been knocked out. At worst, I wouldn’t have known what hit me.
It was yet another reminder that just when I think I am getting more accustomed to living here, I discover new hazards. Still, in the face of disaster, it is good to know that you are never alone. Around town there were signs reading, “Slipped or fallen?”. These were followed by phone numbers for attorneys-at-law.
My friend and I visited the Liberty Bell, which is often referred to as “an iconic symbol of American independence” but actually is a badly made bell that happens to have lasted the distance since independence. It is commonly believed that the bell was rung in Philadelphia, which, for a short period, was the capital city of the US, to proclaim that the Declaration of Independence had been signed.
It is a good story and would be even better if only it were true, which historians say it is not. Regardless, abolitionists, suffragettes and civil rights campaigners have used the Liberty Bell as a symbol. Nice, but no bananas for me.
Independence Hall, on the other hand, is the real deal. You can visit the very room where the Declaration was signed and, look, over there is the very chair George Washington sat in to preside over the council that considered the wording. There are no interactive buttons in the room, no audiovisual shows, just a ranger talking about what occurred, and the weight of history in the air. That, to me, is a museum worth walking in freezing weather to reach.
Had the ice struck, at the very least I would have been knocked out. At worst, I wouldn’t have known what hit me.