NOAA GOES WEATHER SATELLITE
The biggest snow fall in Houston (1994) since 1895.
COGNITIVE HEARTH
Cities are incredible innovations. If not for only one thing, it's where people, with all their diverse ideas, attitudes, perspectives, collectively come together and make a spatial statement.....a corporeal statement defined from a collection of disparate, human energy. The city has order beyond the limitation of its cultural boundaries. Even it's internal economic linkages: competitive, complementary, or ancillary, are all there to exist for the good of the collective. If there were no value to this hodgepodge of humanity what good is a city? Could it be that given this collection of people with all their divergent ideas, working it out....no, fighting it out......somehow......perhaps transcendentally, they come to know humanity at its best....a synergy worth maintaining?
Even though there are strength in numbers....consider what happens to a monocrop of humanity when a hurricane comes along and wipes it out. Two perspectives emerge. First there is a consensus that says, forget this city, it's over with, I'm out of here. However, another consensus arises that fights to rebuild the city, fights to maintain it, fights to make it better. Do they pursue this because they sense there is value for each one of them in this diverse collective of human ingenuity called the City of New Orleans?
Could the essence of the city be a social analogy for the real value that can be found in the commitment of the love between two people? What of the synergy that is derived from the union of two disparate souls? It doesn't snow in Houston, and I know I can't have you. Is something wrong with Houston, a city.... that is....a model for what is collectively good about people? It doesn't snow there....I don't like that.....Maybe there is a subliminal paradox in this lyric? Perhaps a storm has wiped out this city, but why can't someone understand the value in trying to rebuild it?
Only those who understand the collective thought behind commitment understand what value there is in sacrifice.
How can you think it is good to settle a
grievance too great to ignore, when the settlement surely evokes
other piques? The Wise Man therefore will select the left-hand
part of contract tallies: he will not put the debt on other men.
This virtuous man promotes agreement; the vicious man allots the
blame. (Verse Number 79 from The
Way of Life by Lao Tzu, The Tao Té Ching: The Classic Translation
and Introduction by R.B. Blakney Mentor, 1955)
CONDITIONS
Of the character of the city.
In the 1960s Petula Clark sang the Tony
Hatch hit...Downtown; When you're alone and life is
getting you down you can always go DOWNTOWN! Petula also had
another city hit in which she gently reminded her lover don' t
sleep in the subway darling. Liza Minnelli knew that if she could
make it there, she could make it anywhere in New York New York!
Frank Sinatra proclaimed, Chicago, Chicago, its my kind of
town! These songs all said something positive about the city
and its character. Even country singers couldn't escape what was
good about cities. Johnny Cash and June Carter had been talkin'
about Jackson ever since the fire went out. George Hamilton's,
Abilene, was the prettiest town, he's ever seen, women
there don't treat you mean in Abilene. Cities of the Texas
plains seem to be where its at for Allen Jackson, Amarillo, and
George Strait who makes Amarillo By Morning while Don Williams
was Livin' on Tulsa Time. In Nancy Sinatra's "Sugar
Town" for example, troubles just don't last. There are lyrics
that describe the city as a place where love abounds..."If
you're going, to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in
your hair. The woman of the cities were Sweet City Women.
Sure there were lonesome towns, but even these cities were
places you could trust....even with your heart and you still longed
to come back to if you lost your heart there; Tony Bennett: When
I come back to you San Francisco your golden sun will shine for
me. Even small towns got sung about. Go a little north of
the Golden Gate in 1970 and you could hear Miss Rita Abrams and
the Strawberry Point 4th Grade Class proclaim Mill Valley California,
that's my home.
But in 1964 Gene Pittney presented the city as a reference
point in time when just 24 Hours From Tulsa he lost control
as he held her charms. Glen Campbell sang that by the time
he got to Phoenix, she'll be risin', all alone that is.
Then in the 1970s John Denver became the spokesinger for a generation
longing for Country roads to take them home! Where had
he (we) been all this time? In the wink of a traffic signal at
main and first the romantic image of city lights, Harbour Lights,
happening night spots, and the glamour of Park Place were
replaced with lyrics like Rocky Mountain High and Thank
God I'm a Country Boy, livin' in the city ain't where its
at! Subtle yet fervid comments about the city. A musical
adaptation to The Little House (Virginia Lee Burton)? No
longer was the subway even a place to consider sleeping in as
Hank Williams Jr. likened the city to a war zone in a Country
Boy Will Survive. Elvis sang the Mac Davis hit In the Ghetto.
And there on the Santa Monica freeway country girls driving anything
but John Deere tractors were crying in the fast lane in David
Frizzell's You're the reason God made Oklahoma and I'm still
missing you! What happened? From the Bluest skies you've
ever seen are in Seattle to The night Chicago died?
Consider Jimmy Buffett's Come Monday...alone in a megalopolis
of people: Come Monday, it'll be all right Come Monday I'll
be holding you tight, I spent four lonely days in a brown
LA haze and I just want you back by my side. Seattle's DJ
Danny O'Keefe put an era of urban economic depression into lyric...
Everybody's leaving town,....some caught a freight some caught
a train, good time Charlie's got the blues. Jim Croce: just
laid it on the lyrical line, ....cause New York's not my home.
And Simon and Garfunkel: ....And each town looks the same to
me, the movies and the factories and every strangers face I see
reminds me that I long to be homeward bound!
ELECTRA: Isn't
there some pretty girl waiting for you somewhere in the world?
ORESTES: Nobody is waiting for me anywhere. I wander from
city to city a stranger to all others and to myself, and the cities
close again behind me like the waters of a pool. If I leave Argos,
what trace of my coming will remain, except the cruel disappointment
of your hope?
ELECTRA: You told me about happy towns---
ORESTES: What do I care for happiness? I want my share of
memories, my native soil, my place among the men of Argos. [A
short silence] Electra, I will not leave Argos.
From, The Flies, scene I, Jean-Paul Sartre
In 1895 Houston had 20 inches of snow.
