13 December 2006

Major Announcements

Travel is a crap-shoot in the northland. Sometimes it is fast and efficient, and sometimes there is no movement at all, everything paralyzed in ice and blowing snow. The weather forecast assumes the proportions of a Major Policy announcement back in Washington.

“Michigan, my Michigan,”is the refrain from the old song. The terrain that flashed by grabbed my memory as hard as the country music and Christmas carols on the unfamiliar radio stations.

I drove upstate in the big Crown Victoria I rented to avoid the deadening drive across the mountains and plains from Virginia. I flew into Detroit, which is an international hub for inbound flights from Asia. Crowds of Japanese gathered around guides in the concourse.

Clear of the modern terminal, I roared out of the Avis depot in style, the V-8 thundering in response to my foot. The suspension is a little soft, almost scary. Distraction means the car has a tendency to float off in a direction of its own. It lacks precision. But it is exactly like sitting on my couch. The Michigan visible through the windshield was just like a picture window of oddly green fields and stark naked trees.

The Crown Vic may be the last flower of the old Ford Detroit's ironworks, though for all I know it was built in Canada and Mexico.

The Cops like it, since it is the last full-sized sedan on the roads. You can fill up the back with miscreants and have plenty of room for shotgun racks, laptop computers and anything other cutting-edge law enforcement tools. The roof is wide enough for any array of lights and antennas. It is a platform, more than it is an automobile, a receptacle for suitcase and relatives.

The folks told me the snow last week was brutal. They almost could not make it downstate in the blizzard. White-out conditions persisted down to Cadillac, and they thought they might have to stay over in that crossroads town, something we had never considered in the last forty years of passing over these roads, snow or rain.

In then end they pressed on, and made their social commitment. Driving back, things had completely changed. The clouds blew out, temperatures came up and the plows made their rounds. It was Michigan at the beginning of winter, before the deep-freeze settles in.

If the climate hasn't changed, that is. There was a major announcement in San Diego yesterday from the Corps of Engineers at an important conference. The Corps is of the professional opinion that storm erosion is a growing problem, not just on the Gulf Coast, but in North Carolina.

There are other current reports that the polar cap is diminishing, the vanishing ice not being replaced. The radio gives as much weight to that as a court suit about the size or shape of the currency launched by the blind.

If the former is true, the latter is irrelevant. But we cannot seem to sort out the difference between what is important and what is not.

I steeled myself for this visit, watching the weather fronts coming across the Great Plains. The major announcement s about them determined what sort of parka and mukluks to pack. In the end, I crammed some gifts into a bag, and flew out of Reagan National on a perfectly fine day that connected with the grayness of the Great Lakes State.

It was moist, and in the forties. The sky was leaden in the way we all remember. All that fresh water surrounding the flat land translates to gray on gray, filtering the light into more shades of gray. Fallow fields, muted black skeletons of trees. Mist on the windshield. Deer wandering out on the highway, gray beasts, engaged in business of their own.

Could be worse, of course. It could all be ice.

I suppose the President could be saying that this morning. Weather is no excuse back home. Out here in the hinterland, I listen to the radio in amazement.

The President is apparently meeting with people to get recommendations on what to do about the war he was so eager to get us in. He does not appear to like the tepid advice he got from the old men who were sent in to give him a lifeline. Even those were delayed to that they would come after the mid-term elections, just like the personnel changes at the Pentagon.

There was supposed to be a major announcement about the things the President has learned over the last few days. I am excited to hear what it is, though it apparently will not be coming until after the New Year, when the Iraq Study Group is forgotten with the wreckage of shiny paper and ribbons of the holiday.

I don't know the way out of that one. I have been holding my breath since this all began. The professionals know how hard it is to predict the results of war. It is certainly not turning out the way the amateurs thought, and there might be a major announcement about that at some point.

I'll be watching the weather in the meantime. If the temperature plunges with all this water around, it will quickly turn this great state into a skating rink. That would be a major announcement indeed.

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