Snowing alone...

Robert Putnam wrote about the loss of community in American society in the book Bowling Alone. He argues that Americans are increasingly disconnected and isolated from one another. People are less likely now than in the past to be part of social organizations; they are less likely to be involved in communal activities; they are less likely to know their neighbors and local community. People spend more time alone in their own houses - watching tv, playing computer games - and travel alone in their cars to workplaces where they are less likely to participate in trade unions. Children don't play out together. I've read the book a couple of times and, to be honest, I have never really appreciated the full significance of his message because English society is as atomized and isolated as the America he describes. Living in New England, however, has allowed me to better understand the significance of the book's message. It's not the society which he describes now which is the book's real focus, it's the nostalgia for a way of being which Putnam feels has been lost.

America conforms to an 'American' way of doing things in a way that is almost impossible to imagine happening in England. For example, at Thanksgiving everyone eats turkey. In the lead-up to Christmas, English magazines are filled with alternatives to turkey. The focus is upon doing things differently, being individual. For American Thanksgiving there is no such diversity or suggestion that you might want to improvise. It's Thanksgiving - you eat turkey. At my writing group last week, the women spent half an hour discussing the advertisements which were broadcast during the Superbowl. When I explained that this seemed a bit weird to me as an Englishwoman, they talked about how great it was that a person living in Texas would have seen the same advertisements (which were focused upon a particularly normative way of American life) as someone living in New England. It is a moment of convergence; a way of navigating the size of America; a way of creating tradition within a relatively new country formed from a diversity of ethnic immigrant traditions; a way of averting one's eyes from some of the horrors of this country's history.

And one of the reasons why Americans get so excited about big weather events is because they provide an opportunity for convergence, in the same kind of way to Thanksgiving, a big league football game, or a rousing rendition of the National Anthem.

1. Anticipation
The storm was anticipated for nearly a week before it arrived. Weather forecasting is taken extremely seriously in New England. I realize, when writing this, that I have three separate forecasts stored as bookmarks on my web screen. This is not remotely excessive. Most New Englanders access forecasts from several news channels, websites, radio programs and then triangulate them with friends, families and complete strangers in supermarkets. Conversations about the weather tend, therefore, to be quite lengthy and extremely well informed. The weather is something that affects everyone - Republican or Democrat, Christian or Jew, 99% or aspiring 1% - it's a safe area for discussion and it's an area where one has the sense that 'we're all in this together'.

2. Preparation
In the days leading up to the forecast storm, you spend several hours queuing in a supermarket buying food that you wouldn't otherwise have needed and may well never eat. You drive around the shopping mall car park for a very long time trying to get close to the hardware store where you buy batteries and candles to add to the collection you established, and didn't use, for the last storm. Bakhtin thought that 'carnival' served a crucial role in social life through providing a counterbalance to all the social norms by which we have to live for the remainder of the year. On those carnival days, social norms can be broken and people can engage in behaviors which are normally forbidden. Shopping in the lead-up to a 'major weather event' (or Thanksgiving, or a superbowl game) serves the same purpose as Bakhtin's carnival. You can be rude, offensive, and downright vicious with your shopping trolley... this is the only time that you are not expected to conform to the exquisite social manners of the average New Englander. As a sociologist, the supermarket is fascinating at these times. If you need a pint of milk, it's hell.

3. Arrival
Once the storm arrives, you are socially obliged to do what you are told - which is to go into your house and not come out until the news channel tells you that it is ok to leave. New Englanders tend to be fairly obedient on these occasions. For example, the Governor of Massachusetts advised New Englanders to hunker down  and stay inside for Nemo and the roads were empty from lunchtime on Friday. The Governor then got cold feet (sorry) and decided to be more assertive. During the snowstorm, anyone who drove their car (except for emergency workers) was liable to a $500 fine and up to a year in prison. On Saturday, people listened to their radios and watched the news channel, waiting for permission to get back into their cars. Typically, New Englanders feel that the English government is overly regulated... I can't imagine anyone making this kind of ruling in England, even though it was clearly beneficial in enabling the snow plows to do their work.

4. Clean-up
The clean-up to a storm is everyone's responsibility. After the catharsis of behaving selfishly in the supermarket, people become hyper-social following the storm. This is the vision that Putnam has of the America of the past. When you've cleaned your own patch of sidewalk of snow, you help out your neighbors. You make coffee for the guys who are driving the snow plows - they  aren't employed by a council, they are self-employed and they work extremely hard. You watch out for one another's kids. You put out seed for the birds and salt to stop the old ladies slipping on the sidewalk. And there is something truly idyllic about the way that people momentarily come together. In relation to Nemo, this was enhanced by the fact that no-one was allowed to drive. There were no cars on the road. And the sky was blue and the sun was shining... After cleaning up, it seemed that the entire Cambridge community took their children sledding on a nearby hill.

 5. And then happily ever after...
And then you dig out your car and everything returns to normal. The roads are clogged, people leave chairs at the side of the road so that no-one uses their carefully dug-out car parking space, front doors are closed against the street. After Nemo, it even started raining - just to add to the general disappointment (and the officials who define such things decided that it hadn't been a blizzard anyway).

I think that at some level people miss the communality that a big storm creates. That's maybe one of the reasons why we watch the weather forecasts so closely. We want our moments of carnival, our moments of feeling like we belong to a community, before we return to the isolated lives that Putnam describes.