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El Niño
December 23, 1997NewsHour Transcript |
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Los Angeles essayist Anne Taylor Fleming waits for the worst El Niño has to offer.
ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: There's hardly a day when El Niño goes unmentioned here in Southern California, barely a day without a headline or a bleat from one of the local Los Angeles news shows. It's the phantom of the local weather soap opera, handsome anchor folk, and weather people warning in stentorian voice that El Niño is coming. El Niño--ocean warmer--potential destroyer of beaches and piers and houses and lives is just around the corner, so we'd better batten down the hatches.
All of this El Niño hype does seem to be a little much, and most of the people I know are taking it with our usual dose of Southern California fatalism. We are people, after all, who are acutely aware of the potential dangers of Mother Nature. We live atop a crinkle of fault lines and the constant apprehension of a major earthquake. Then, of course, there are the winter mud slides, to be followed, of course, by the killer fires that come with the Santa Ana winds of late summer, all to say that we live with destructive weather in the best of times, building and rebuilding our houses on shore lines and fault lines and mountaintops as if to dare the weather gods to strike again. Now we're told that's just what they're going to do big time. We might shrug, but we're still getting prepared for the promised torrential rains El Niño will dump on us. We can't help ourselves, nor can the merchants. After all, there's a lot of profit in fear. Everywhere you go you see roofers fixing leaks, rain gutters being cleaned out, and big time galoshes being offered for sale. With hardly a drop of water yet shed in LA, it's hard to know how afraid actually to be, and when you think about it, finding things to be afraid about is a pretty common theme these days.
If El Niño doesn't tickle your apprehension, we have germs waiting to sprout in your chicken or beef. Then there are those killer viruses, the flu bugs, and infections, that know their evil way around antibiotics. None of this is to say that there isn't some truth in these warnings, perhaps a great deal. But something in me says that maybe it's just a little bit of overkill; that maybe we're looking for things to worry about in the absence of anything serious to concern us.
It occurs to me that maybe everything in America is a little too good right now; things are a little too calm. The economy's pretty strong, despite stock market wobbles. The Cold War is over. We have no major enemies, although some would like us to be apprehensive about China in the future. Even crime is down. So with no identifiable visible enemy we seem determined to supply ourselves with invisible ones. Look at the wildly popular TV series, the "X Files." Perfect paranoid, paranormal stuff in which two attractive earthlings fence off with some unidentifiable enemy from outer space.
All right. I know El Niño is potentially scary, but I just can't help but think we're indulging in these pervasive fear fantasies. Maybe at heart we're still primitives, who for all our scientific sophistication and understanding, have to have something to fear, some natural or supernatural force to reckon with, just as we need something bigger than ourselves, a God or spirit, to pray to and honor. Maybe it's just the nature of our beast. That's what the spiritual side of me says. On the other hand, my practical side has had the roof checked for leaks and the rain gutters cleaned.
I'm Anne Taylor Fleming.
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