Black Outs East and West Coast Style
TheDailyFix
A few years back the entire Western United States had a huge power outage. It cascaded from somewhere up in Washington all the way down to Mexico where they don't even have electricity....
This disaster warranted precisely five seconds of air time on the evening news.
Contrast that with last week's nonstop coverage on the outage. on the East Coast and nobody can tell us that some Americans are not a bunch of whiny namby pamby wimps. At least those outside of New York City. In the Big Apple, everyone shrugged, got out of their steamy offices and simply walked home to Queens or the Bronx. If they couldn't get home, they took a nap in Grand Central Station. In Detroit and Ohio, however, everyone whined non-stop for three days.
Gracious, in California a power outage is call for celebration. Everyone just goes home and hits the pool, empties the fridge of ice and makes slushies for the kids and margaritas for the grown ups. Then everyone floats around in really ugly, giant pool toys, listens to the radio while trying their cell phones again. If that doesn't work, everyone just parties until well after dark and breaks out the torches and candles because, well, this is earthquake country and nobody is running to the store to buy supplies that they already have.
Well past supper time kids get to get cereal for dinner and the adults polish off all the leftover take out and wine. CDs are played, ghost stories are told and nobody goes to sleep in a hurry or worrying too darn much.
When Californians find out the power isn't back on the next morning, they shrug like New Yorkers, only more casually, and plan for a long weekend that includes barbecuing whatever is in the fridge, listening to the radio some more and calling over some friends who we normally only get email as a way of keeping in touch.
Finally, Californians think, while floating in those really ugly giant pool toys, it wasn't a 6.5 this time. And then they pass around another pitcher of margaritas.
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