The metro region is buried this morning under feet of heavy white snow. The Government won’t be a threat to anyone today, and I’m not sure we are going to be effective again the rest of the week, regardless of how hard we dig or how warm it gets. My apologies to the BBC this morning. There just was no point in getting out from under the eiderdown to hear the beginning of the World Service. I did not set the alarm, and brushed the button on the radio to hear it murmur: “State of Emergency in Maryland, Virginia and the District.”

“Metro running only underground routes, on the hour only, starting after eight�.”

“More precipitation expected through the day�.”

The combination of a violent Nor’Easter and a slow-moving weaker storm hung the precipitation over us for more than a day. Some places were getting four inches an hour. Reagan National Airport was closed, but the folks on duty reported a record 13.1 inches for the day. Dulles, out to he west, got more snow but kept one runway active through the day. Silver Spring Maryland, just around the corner at the twelve o’clock position on the Beltway, got two feet. Philadelphia reported the same, a white thick quilt that buried everything alive. Fwump!

The Governor in Maryland- a Republican for the first time since Spiro Agnew- closed all public roads except for emergency vehicles. The President got dispensation to be on the road, since his helicopters were grounded. It reportedly took him two hours to get back to the city. It is comforting to know that the weather is thoroughly equal opportunity for the mighty and the meek. I’m one of the meek, situationally, and I just watched it pile up an inch-an-hour, starting before dawn yesterday. Constant, steady, nearly a white-out, inexorably covering us deep, burying everything. This storm had some serious stuff, and being a record and all, they are trying to come up with a name for it. One weather-guesser was calling it “The Big Dog” storm, but most folks from the Midwest just sniffed and said it was a garden-variety blizzard.

We just don’t get them here.

It is still precipitating. Standing on my balcony this morning, surveying the situation, I noted that the fine snow had transitioned to sleet and it was coming down with a sound like frying bacon. Nature appears to be putting a sealing-coat on the blanket that will result in a heavy sandwich, ice crust on top, heavy dense center, and ice and grit on the bottom where the snow bonded with the slush when this began . Everything is closed. This was to be a snow-make up day for many of the public schools. The Government was scheduled to take a holiday in honor of Presidents Washington and Lincoln, one of those odd days when the bureaucrats can visit the bank and the mall at their leisure and not have to expect the mail.

It is a shame to waste a holiday like this. If only we had managed to schedule this for the mid-week it would have been marvelous. But I am getting restless, too much sleep upsetting my system, and I imagine there will be a surge of pent-up energy around town later today. Even the most ardent of lovers are probably looking for the Chapstick this morning. Most of the videos, rented in the giddy time of preparation last Friday, have been watched. The kids have been out in it and the foul-weather gear is still soggy from the adventures in the falling whiteness. The harvest of the last trip to the Giant supermarket has been cooked. The icecream is gone. Cabin fever will be setting in today after 48 hours of enforced idleness.

I’m OK. I had a DVD to watch later, I could do the taxes, and there are dozens of books beckoning from the bookcase or that accusatory stack of magazines by my chair where they have waited patiently, some since last year. But somehow I think that is not going to happen. I think I am going to go dig out my car, and prepare for an awful commute tomorrow.

I assume they will lower the terror threat alert from Orange, with which nothing rhymes, to something like Mellow Yellow, since even al Qaida is buried with us. Tomorrow we will deal with the NATO decision to allow planning to begin on the defense of Turkey. The decision was quietly shifted from the Atlantic Council, where the doughty French have a seat, to a Defense Planning committee in which they do not. The half-million Germans who marched for peace will be back, diligently working in their Teutonic manner, and the 130,000 Americans currently on holiday in the Gulf will continue to do whatever it is that they must. Last night 60 Minutes investigated the state of readiness of the troops to deal with nuclear-chem-bio attack, pillorying some bureaucrat on the state of equipment. Old Warrior David Hackworth claimed the troops are not ready, saying NBC rally meant “nobody cares.” Hackworth makes his living as an advocate for the troops, part of his pennance for all the medals he won over the bodies of the kids in his care.

I don’t know if the claims are true are not. I should think this country makes enough duct-tape to take care of any contingency, military or civilian. But Andy Rooney summed it up pretty well in his curmudgeon’s corner at the dance-off. He growled into the camera and said the French had no place to complain about potential American action in the Gulf. He was eloquent and gruff. He described what the British and Americans had done to liberate France from le Boche, and then warmed to his story of being a witness to the parade of fraud held the day after the Anglo-Americans had liberated the City of Light. General DeGaul strode down the boulevard toward the Place de la Concorde surrounded by his minions. His uniform looked great, crisply tailored in the best French martial tradition. His entourage passed the tanks colorfully tricked-out with the Free French Cross of Lorraine, all recently provided by Uncle Sam. Suddenly shots came from a building near the square. The crowd of French people ran for cover, and the Americans took the building under fire, eliminating the sniper threat.

Then De Gaul went back to pretending that he had liberated his country. Andy had taken cover under an American military truck. He leaned forward to the camera and said that he enjoyed going back to the Place de la Concorde every couple of years, knowing something about French history that the French do no know. He growled that the French had no right to object to the President’s policy. I was surprised at the polemic, since Mssr Rooney is normally a dove on matters of armed conflict, having actually experienced one. But then his last line made it clear.

The French didn’t have the right to object, he said. But he did.

Point taken, I thought. Now let’s dig out and get on with it. I’m tired of being buried.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra