The Norway spruce

One of the reasons I fell in love with my house in the first place was the Norway spruce. It must be at least as old as the house, and is now more than twice the height. If the Forest Road (west) side of my house is comparatively horizontal in emphasis, the spruce hoists a delightful exclamation mark on the right. In so many respects they fit together perfectly. (This view is from the north.)

However, two arborists who know what they are talking about lately broke it to me that my tree is seriously ailing, and will eventually need to be cut down. There are certain things in the short- to middle-term, in other words over the course of the next few seasons, that can be done to improve the health of my fine old tree, but I am told none will alter the long-term prognosis. There is also the possibility, however remote, that should we experience another storm as severe as Hurricane Irene my tree could snap in two, and the potential consequences of that are unthinkable.

Mum loved trees, and I think I have inherited that rather endearing quality from her. Much of her life was devoted to protecting various trees at Metung from the ravages of relentless westerly gales, the poor soil (little more than a sand dune, really), the possums, and other enemies. In the circumstances she accomplished much. I can only think of one occasion when Mum accepted that one of her trees, or indeed any tree, really needed to be cut down. That was the enormous, rather squat cypress that stood directly in front of the house, entirely blocking the view of Bancroft Bay—though I am quite sure that was not the reason why it was cut down. I remember also how wistfully Mum regretted the loss of the wonderful old liquid amber that the new neighbors felled to make way for the house they built in 1979, right after flattening old one at 18 Denham Place. Now, barely eighteen months since I took possession of my very own, for the first time in my life I am faced with the unwelcome prospect of having to cut down a tree, and not just any old tree—a mighty presence, an old soldier, a stalwart veteran of a hundred storms, still standing ramrod straight but these days with a discernible stoop. It just isn’t fair.

Message in a bottle

If in New Haven, Conn., you live on the corner of two streets, one of which is technically a state route and the other a city street, as I do, and something happens, such as a tropical storm, and the power goes out through the entire neighborhood, and police road blocks go up over both city streets and the state route alike, encircling you like a snug and impenetrable noose, naturally you seek information, and, seeking it, you encounter the following problem: The City of New Haven transportation department refers you to the state of Connecticut department of transportation, and the state of Connecticut department of transportation refers you back to the City of New Haven transportation department. That’s if you can find the right telephone number in either case. It is understandable that under present conditions, in which everyone is working as hard as possible and doing all that they can to bring things back to normal in the aftermath of tropical storm Irene, there will be tiresome delays. However my neighbors and I can neither drive into nor out of our properties, in which there is no power, and all we are asking is for a rough estimate of how long this state of affairs is likely to continue, and, incidentally, since the barriers all around us read “CAUTION ENERGIZED AREA,” a wonderfully ambiguous phrase, what risks there are in our immediate vicinity of which we should obviously be made aware. I see no wires down, nor any risky trees. As usual, the United Illuminating Company (UI) are not easily reachable, and their online storm information impossible to decypher. The person I just spoke to did not even know what “CAUTION ENERGIZED AREA” means. No idea. So I am putting this message in a virtual bottle in the hope that someone else may come to our rescue. Until then the experience of returning home after dark at the end of the working day will continue to have a Cathy-and-Heathcliff dimension, with more prosaic stubbed toes thrown in. Thank you.

Recovery haiku

My house is clearly

Eine feste Burg, thank God.
Shame about the fence.

These days anything
At all that approaches Wall
Street gets downgraded.

Watch TV, they said.
Hard when the cables are snapped,
But far more restful.

After the maelstrom,
Busy blokes in pick-ups thirst
For chainsaw action.

My New York Times came
Despite the storm. Pity I
Couldn’t retrieve it.

That driver stopped and
Took pictures of the damage
To my yard. Moron.

CNN wanted
Our photos—“but don’t take risks.”
Couldn’t they take them?

Fill up your bathtub,
They said, mysteriously.
Today I know why.

The grid is like a
Tree. They fix the trunk first, then
Limbs. I am a leaf.

After Irene, a
Hundred ways with dry biscuits
And canned goods. Who knew?

Irene wrought still less
Than collateralized debt
Obligations did.

Motorist! You toss
Your empty bottle as if
Irene said you could.

Dominatrix! You
Say my call is important
To you. What rubbish.

The rich banker’s house:
Gone, but for shards of onyx
Tub. That is my dream.

The name of Hurricane Irene

According to the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations agency responsible for studying the state and behavior of the Earth’s atmosphere, its interaction with the oceans, the climate these produce, and the resulting distribution of fresh water, “there is a strict procedure to determine a list of tropical cyclone names in an ocean basin by the responsible Tropical Cyclone Regional Body at its annual or biennial meeting.” There are five such tropical cyclone regional bodies, of which the fourth, that of North America, Central America, and the Caribbean concerns us here. From 1953 to 1979 Atlantic tropical storms were named consecutively from lists of twenty-one women’s Christian or first names arranged alphabetically (except for the letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z) on a six-year rotation. In 1979, it was decided to add men’s names to these lists, alternating with women’s, and, should the number of tropical storms ever exceed twenty-one, to continue thereafter with the names for letters of the Greek alphabet, that is, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, etc. From these lists certain names are occasionally removed for reasons of sensitivity when they stand post hoc for a storm that caused much loss of life or destruction. “It is important to note,” they say, “that tropical cyclones or hurricanes are named neither after any particular person, nor with any preference in alphabetical sequence,” whatever that means. Such names are said to be familiar to whole populations in each region, for the purposes of comprehensibility, clarity, memorability, and, in turn, better preparedness, and improved public safety. So where I sit just now, in New Haven, Conn., Hurricane Irene—Irene of the Horai, she of order, loveliness, spring flowers, cornucopias, predictability and, above all, peace—is instead charging up the eastern seaboard of the United States like a mad, bile-spitting harpy, causing immense upheaval, chaos, disruption, fear, and destruction. Moreover, and most curiously, she is to be found in the following bizarre sequence of names that were apparently selected on purpose, but according to no identifiable principle of taste, by invisible meteorologists who claim to know which names are most memorable to a majority of people in our multilingual, multicultural, multinational region. It is simply mystifying, but I suppose it could just as easily have been Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Don, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harvey, Jose, Katia, Lee, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Philippe, Rina, Sean, Tammy, Vince, Whitney, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, etc. So let us be gay.

Irene haiku

Pine needles rustling,

Harbingers of fall, but no:

The tree squashed my car.

No power, no gas.

Water’s off. With my flashlight,

Though, I read Miss Pym.

Mudslide trauma, then

More checks for the contractors.

What was I thinking?

A gallon per day

Of bottled water, they said.

I’d sooner have gin.

Looters rummaging

Through the wreckage of my house.

Bring me Nick’s chainsaw.

Evacuation?

Not if it means going to

A gymnasium.

Above the clamor,

Amy Chua’s kids must do

Violin practice.

“Storm strike with fury,”

Confucius say, “like dragon,

Or Mrs. Murdoch.”

After the tempest

Irksome Yalies ask: “What are

You working on now?”

“Hurricane Irene”:

Whoever named it needs a

Good Greek dictionary.

Connecticut code

Warns against use of candles.

But don’t they eat out?

If hurricanes were

Like Trumbles, their wrath would melt

Harmlessly away.

“Chipmunk!” I chortle,

“Have you some inkling of what’s

Coming down the pike?”

The book of crisis

Cuisine has no recipe

For blanquette de veau.

If the mighty oak

Blows down, why can’t it land

On a few squirrels?

A man’s house is his

Castle, except when high winds

Bugger up the roof.

Chipmunk! Your nest near

My grease trap suits you just fine,

So why jump ship now?

Could that be the sound

Of my chimney teetering

On the brink of coll…?