Tim Schreier

“The world is too much with us,” claimed William Wordsworth, but he didn’t know the half of it. The Weather Channel is too much with us, would be more to the point. Mayor Bloomberg is too much with us. Anderson Cooper is too much with us. Fox News is too much with us. Warnings and dire threats of all kinds are too much with us — e.g. those surrounding “Hurricane Irene,” who/which would have been more accurately described as “Subtropical Depression Irene” by the time she managed to waddle her way up the East Coast in her rain-soaked skirts and finally “hit” New York with the soft, wet slap of a gloved hand. As trees swayed gently and reporters valiantly swallowed their disappointment, we were all far too invested in the story to evacuate the portion of our brain in which she’d taken up residence.

Well, she did rain a great deal. And knocked down some trees and flooded this highway and that subway, but a “hurricane” she was not. Nonetheless she managed to take up most of my weekend – mentally speaking. And by the time she finally cleared town I was flat-out exhausted by her. For two days I had obsessively followed the event-to-come, watching TV, scanning Internet sites, constantly checking The Times’ “Hurricane Tracker” and all the latest updates from FEMA, only to discover that it was all foreplay and no conclusion. Read more…