Everyone Talks About the Weather
There’s a quote often attributed to one of my favorite American authors, Mark Twain: “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” Yeah, not so funny anymore.
I’ve always believed we need the lessons of history. Here’s Mark Twain talking about New England weather. It sounds strangely modern:
“The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn’t leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether — Well, you’d think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there.”
- “The New England Weather”, Mark Twain’s Speeches
That was over a hundred years ago.
Back to me, one of the perks of staying on Nantucket in the winter is that it gets only a fraction of the snow the mainland gets. The island is only 40 miles offshore, but it makes about a 10-degree difference due to the “warm” ocean. Right now Boston has flurries and snow on the ground: here it’s all gusty wind, gray skies and drizzle–hooray!
The UK isn’t having it so good, island or not: Weeks of solid ground, snow and ice have put paid to almost all horse sport in the UK. It’s the frozen ground that’s the problem; it is too hard on the horses’ legs. Snow itself is okay–there is even international jumping competition on snow in St. Moritz(!)
