I didnt write it but found it interesting.

Colorado after todays snowstorm.

WEATHER BULLETIN

Up here, in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from a Historic event--- may
I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" --- with a historic
blizzard of up to 44" inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in
half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow
banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's
of thousands.

FYI:

George Bush did not come.

FEMA did nothing.

No one howled for the government.

No one blamed the government.

No one even uttered an expletive on TV .

Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.

Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.

Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.

CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX or NBC did not visit - or report on this category 5
snowstorm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.

No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.

No one looted.

Nobody - I mean Nobody demanded the government do something.

Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.

No Larry King, No Bill O'Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No Geraldo Rivera.

No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.

Nope, we just melted the snow for water.

Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.

The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a penny.

Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it
to the snowbound families.

Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.

We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.

We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is "Work or Die".

We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess
created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for sittin'
at home checks.

Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early,
we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.

"In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48
degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate."

It does seem that way, at least to me.

That was an outstanding article!!! I wholeheartedly agree about the latitude and attitudes.

Polak Here in Utah we have the same mentallity "if'n your neighbor needs help dress warm and go help" (without being asked)
like my grandpappy used to say "What goes around comes around" <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Yes, that same article circulated in the Great Plains shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

Its references to politics, social morality, personal responsibility, and general overall gumption leave me aghast (cough, sputter, wheeze). (wink)

EDITED BY STRETCHNM TO EXCLUDE REFERENCES TO ......EDITED.............DELETED.....

Honestly, I think it has more to do with the socio-economic strata than with anything else. Sad, but true. When you've depended your whole life on someone else's help, you naturally expect it when a disaster happens.
I'm trying to sound as PC as possible here. If you've depended on the gov't for, literally, everything, then, when everything is gone, you scream for the gov't to help you out. Whereas when you've lived your whole life, making due, fixing things yourself, and are generally self-reliant (within reason, of course), then, you see the crisis for what it is; a temporary setback from the norm. So, instead of screaming for others to help you, the individual, you mobilize OTHER individuals, and do the helping yourself. Why, because thats what you'd expect from your neighbors.
We up here in new england see the same thing; blizzard of 78 was a prime example. Most of the state was crippled for a week. Pipes froze, no power, etc. Granted, I was young, but I remember cooking on a hibachi, in the basement, with the windows open for oxygen. I also recall melting snow in a LOT of pots. No one came & "rescued" us, nor did any gov't come & bring us food. We went back & forth regularly to neighbors houses to eat, having quite a few folks at different places each night. IIRC, it was a rather pleasant week. Of course, we had no school that week either... <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Ahhh, the Blizzard of '78. I remember it well. At the time, as a young lad, I had a part-time job working for a garden center/florist. At some point during the blizzard, a K5 Blazer showed up in the one barely passable lane that had been the street my family lived on. My brothers and I were trying to uncover my parents car from a drift. A guy jumps out in a snowmobile style suit, and says, "Ron, grab a shovel, the boss wants us to start shovelling off the snow on the greenhouses before they collapse, he's paying double time!" The guy behind the mask in the snowmobile suit was a friend who worked there, that had taken his dad's 4x4 (we didn't seem to call them SUV's back then) and picked me up. It didn't seem to occur to us that if they thought the greenhouses were going to collapse, maybe we shouldn't really be climbing up there? Of course, once we heard we were getting double our pay, all reason went out the window anyway.

After that (which we survived) we basically spent a couple days driving around to all of our friends and family delivering groceries, gas, charcoal, wood, whatever. Turns out that there weren't nearly as many 4 wheel drive vehicles around back then. Most pickups were rear wheel drive, and those that had 4 wheel were mostly plowing. I remember taking the removable roof off the back of the Blazer to load it with cordwood at one point. Those things were COLD with the back off. Still, the best part was that we were basically heros when we pulled up in front of somebody's house with food, or wood, or whatever. I remember getting a big hug and kiss from this really, well, attractive young lady, (an older sister of a friend). Why did I get this? Well, that's were the story isn't so exciting, you see, we were bringing clean diapers to her house <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> (Those were the old cloth diapers, washed by her grandmother who still had power.)

Ahhh yes, the good old days.

I'd say it has nothing to with lattitude, but rural attitude. The further out you are, the more familiar you are with the idea of "it's thee, thyself and thou for at least half an hour if something goes wrong".

What I'm about to say is not ment as a slight to anyone on a paying agency, but I've observed that places that have volunteer firefighters and rescue squads are the places where people are going to better when the stuff hits the fan. They form a cadre, and everyone knows someone on those agencies, so you know that as bad off as you are there are people doing more. So you just shut up and do.

These types of agencies are also universally rural, so people are used to thinking in terms of picking up a gallon of milk being a half hour under good conditions. And you don't always have the right part available to you when something breaks, so you take what is there and figure out how to make it work becuase you need the equipment online now or you'll be in the poor house by the time the right part gets shipped in.

Or maybe I'm right about on the 44N line, and I'm just annoyed by someone who's never seen how people in Northern New England react to bad luck. Sure, we'll ask for help if we have to, but we start working at the same time.

I couldn't agree more Oldsoldier. I was being facetious but, if I'm asked, I'll have to deny that <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I agree with IronRaven too... it's attitude, not latitude. However, urban areas, whatever their latitude, can influence attitude.... or so I've been told <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

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Polak, I know you didn't write it, so this isn't targeted at you.

It did get my fangs bared though.

Keep in mind that people fending for themselves and their neighbors isn't juicy news footage.

Not everyone in Louisiana and Mississippi were screaming for help.

Our best friends entire extended family from New Orleans was in their house (up to 40 people at one point) with no power for a week.

CNN never showed them watching the news of their flooded homes on a little tv running off a car battery.

It never will show them finding homes based on their good credit and savings within a week or so of Katrina.

ABC never showed those of us scouring Baton Rouge daily after work for ice to keep their food and medicine cold.

CBS will never show the people at my wife's church housing Red Cross volunteers in their fellowship hall for weeks on end and the congregation feeding and washing their laundry day and day out.

NBC and Fox's file footage of Katrina will never show the nurses, physicians, respiratory techs, physical therapist, occ therapist, et al leaving after long exhausting shifts in my hospital and heading down to the LSU assembly center to volunteer day in and day out. Nor will it show my former boss basically commadeer a vacated store to set up a emergency makshift hosptial.

This isn't sexy footage for the news. It only makes it on for a little "feel good" segment at the end of the news cast on the local stations before being filed a way and forgotten.

(personally, I think Shaun Penn just got in the way and was using up valuable oxygen).

The people in the rural areas of Louisiana and Mississippi (black and white) won't show up on news footage of Katrina and Rita because they were taking care of themselves and each other.

All of this occurred below N48.

Looking at the other side of the coin, I used to live and work in a small rural town in central CA. One day there was a pretty good earthquake (6.5). In addition to destroying almost all of the downtown section, a lot of houses were flattened ot knocked off of their foundations. A lot of residents lived several miles out of town, up a narrow canyon that had a creek winding down it. Two lane road, lots of bridges over the creek, most of which were destroyed. Many of the folks living up there did so because they wanted to be independent. So, within three days, many of them were screaming for food and water, claiming that they were starving to death. So my department chopper, the only public rotarywing aircraft in the enire county, was pulled from more important details to fly some burgers and fries to those hardy canyon dwellers. Imagine, running out of food in three days!!!