Newsgroups: bit.listserv.c18-l
Date:         Sun, 30 Aug 1992 16:20:43 CDT
From:         ENCOPE@LSUVM.BITNET
Subject:      View from the Eye
X-To:         C18-L@PSUVM.BITNET, BCJ@PSUVM.BITNET

Dear Kevin Berland and C18-L Readers,
     I thank all of you who sent me letters inquiring after my welfare
and wondering about the bumptious behavior of hurricane Andrew.  Many,
including the illustrious BERLAND, have requested a capsule commentary on
the experience of the storm, which I offer below, along with an affirmation
that I and most every Louisianian associated with eighteenth-century studies,
remain undaunted by the tropical blast.

THE FIFTH BOOK OF THE SEASONS TRANSPROSED, OR, THE TRIUMPH OF ANDREW

     Human folly remains inexhaustible, and so, despite the impending
arrival of Andrew, the LSU administration waited until 6:00 pm last
Tuesday evening to exhale its judgment:  shall the University close, or
shall the study of Titus Oates continue in the midst of the hurricane?
Should the University continue to draw its operating stipend by assuring
the governor that criticism of Skelton would continue through the roar,
despite winds that would down any parrot, let alone the voice of Protestantism?
Heroics, alas, remain confined to the decorous characters of the administrative
court and camp;  those in the legions of criticism, whatever their critical
stripes or political hashmarks, had opted for the role of chevalier, viz.,
had high-tailed it out of town, or as far as their haunches would hustle
them along.
     Early that same evening, Andrew came ashore near Morgan City, the
natural outlet of the Mississippi River, had time and nature defeated
commerce in their contest for the direction of the river.  Numerous
parties who remained in their homes in the expectation of divine
protection were vindicated in their faith, as burly 165 mph cyclonic
winds smashed ancient homesteads and took candy from the mouths of
babes by flattening picturesque sugar fields but hurled none into the
vacuous jaws of Death.  Refuge itself turned into Peril as shelters
lost their roofs and havens heaved off their armaments.  As one bemused
local sage observed, "it's hard to be optimistic when it's raining as
hard inside as outside."  Other locals spurned the hubris of civil
defense technocrats, opting for "hurricane-tested" plantation-era
homes rather than official pre-facricated protective devices.  Those
who follow topographical onomastics will, doubtless, call for
revisions of the map when they learn that the land fared less
well than the people (as if to show Marxists that the means of productio
were secondary to the endurance of the spirit!);  Grand Isle,
having lost 200 feet, will now qualify as Pettite Isle.  Erosion of
wetlands was substantial, although Nature has already repaired some
of the damage.  An example of the triumph of natural process over
human hypersensitivity is the hideous fish-kill along the Texas
coast, which is presently eighteenth miles long and one mile wide,
with a redolence that remains immeasurable.  Endangered species
galore are feasting on redfish and other endangered species, all
tossed ashore by the rude spanking of environmentally incorrect
Andrew!  The heron population should surge while the spawning in
the ocean will doubtless run wild, in a sparagmos of procreation
worthy of a Thompson or a Blair.
     By midnight--the witching hour--Andrew had scorned the settlements
of the south and headed up north to tackle the city aristocrats.
Slipping by laissez-faire New Orleans, Andrew drew a bead on the hard
core of suburbia, firing its ammo between Lafayette and Baton Rouge,
and tackling your truly's Baton Rouge with its NFL-quality northeast
shoulder (cyclone zealots will know that hurricanes are right-hand
helices in the northern hemisphere, rotating (as seen from the top)
counter-clockwise, punishing the northeast, casressing the southwest,
and compromising with the other compass points).  At 12:15 am I arose
from my bechamber, candle-in-hand, to find the world reduced to
darkness and to me, and to hear a cacophany of diabolical sounds--
cracking, wheezing, screams, explosions, electrical happenings--
bemusing my ear by concealing themselves from sight.  As gusts
galloped to 75-80 mph, I understood the wisdom of Charles II in
meeting the challenge of his early years, in 1666, by retreating to
his country estate.  The darkness of the utility collapse was
compounded by the more profound obscurity of the storm itself, which,
unlike other storm systems, had no reflective powers, only those
appointed to the photoelectric equivalents of a Hoover vacuum.  Light
went in, but it didn't come out;  the black whole was on the move!!!!
Concluding that unconsciousness was the best lenitive for cowardice,
I defied Betty Ford's advice, downed a shot of Frangelico (a dose
of paternalism might be in order in this supra-political context),
and commended myself to sleep.
     But what folly!  Hurricanes don't go away in but a few
hours.  Rising again, expecting the tempest to be passed, I found
the same siege underway!  Now, however, I could survey the thousand
texture of the storm.  In one moment a gust of wind would bow an
ancient oak one way, in another it would bend it to another, as
changes in critical wind twist academics in pursuit of gain!  One
after another, LSU-style tiger stripes of rain blasted in, dropped
straight down, then gave way to a lighter but definitely not kinder
and gentler bellows of wind.  Wind, rain, wind rain, for hours and
hours, without remission, without distraction, as telephone and
electricity shortages conspired to cut all communications.  Yet the
storm produced a certain courtesy, as haughty pines bowed to greet
the viewer and a few foolhardy drivers observed all traffic laws with
excruciating precision.  Barricaded in the very center of my house,
reflecting on the wisdom of Palladian layouts, I peered out at the
furious beauty!  Limbs flew everywhere as nature dismembered and
reconfigured itself, taking on a billion forms!  Ah, sublimity!
thought I.  O, politically conniving folly of the National Weather
Service, to deprive hurricanes of their gender by naming them
after men and women by alternation, comparing their gender to
their back-and-forth, horixontally varying rain planes,
and spitting in the face of longstanding myth!  O, to be some great
raptor, to soar along the naked fury of the winds, to ride
like Zeus along the hydrographic contours of this supply aerobic
system!  O altitudino!  O rapture!  O safe engagement at such
hazard!  O disproof of contemporary puritanism!  But descend;  behold
the fate of Pan's meeker progeny, behold the expedients enjoined by
aerial exercise.  Behold the evaporation of family values from the
Rodentia as squirrels, mice, and nutria refrain from mutual
self help or even mutual forgiveness of each vice, to decamp
from the mouse's paradise of Louisiana to the mad world of
self-preservation!  Dowsed with the flood, shivering from cold,
mature quirrels struggle to protect themselves with their umbrella
tails, disappointed at their drenching defeat.  And behold the
extension of human charity, as infant squirrels find their way
into human nests, their to be taken to the LSU rescue unit, fed
by dropper, nourished, and returned to a life as productive
citizens of the State of Nature.
    But more than squirreldom sustained damage, alas.  Noble
pecan trees, once ready to nourish the friendly hand of the
dedicated gardener, waned too friendly, entering living rooms,
not perhaps without knocking, but mayhap by knocking a tad bit
too hard.  Straight and narrow pines, planted by would-be
bayou Alpinists, busied themselves schussing into studies,
hallways, and dens with alarming rapidity.  What once was a
regular alternation of asphalt and lawn became a wall-to-wall
carpet of oak and pecan leaves, yielding a rather pleasant
runway for those eager to stroll in a natural fashion.  The value
of a landed estate reaffirmed itself as impassable roadways
encouraged the vain to look to themselves for pleasure.  Time itself
seemed suspended or at least revised as life conformed to the demands
of need rather than to those of expectation or desire.  Perhaps most
impressing was the downscaling of the environment, as if in emblematic
response to the lower social and economic profile of the 1990s.  Most
every plant--and there are many plants in Louisiana--yielded about 30%
of it height, allowing the curious to peer giraffe-like over the
whole of the world and giving the place a Brobdinagian or Lilliputian
air, depending on your point of view.  And, indeed, some former forests
have now revealed their nagging interest in becoming parking lots,
their tree cover having vanished and their terrain showing off an
eery, unexpected flatness.  What once looked like a cheerful hair
brush now looks like a lean planet.
     LSU, bastion of learning, was and is closed, being the
educationist's answer to a computer game, with dangling, buzzing
electric cords, pitfalls and sinkholes, heaps and heaps of oak
debris, no power, no road access, and yet perennial heart.  Report
informs us that Swift editor John Fischer stayed at the helm of
the English Department until the last aggressive wave washed over the
bow.
     Doughty Kevin Berland was kind enough to ask whether I would
continue to implement plans for the 1993 SCSECS meeting in Baton
Rouge.  The answer is an unmitigated YES!  Now we can add something
to the convention theme.  Perhaps we can call it that "Jolly Old
Whirl of a Century."  The conference hotel withstood the blast, and
is indeed reported to have entered into a dialogue with the hurricane,
lambasting it for its error in inundating a SCSECS conference
facility but exacting a meek reply, indeed a mere visionary hug
from the optic eye.  Andrew will be asked to offer a paper once he
finds a stable address.  Windows of the Presidential Suite
10th floor were damaged, but this appeared to be a sly move,
by the hurricane, to finish off those renovations necessary for
the new SCSECS Presidential Bungie Jump, which I hope will become
an annual SCSECS event.
     And so, I wish again to thank the many well-wishers who wrote
and called to make sure that I was only watching the spin, not
shuffling off the mortal coil.  My commitment to eighteenth-century
studies was intensified by the kind offices and beautifully sincere
inquiries of my dear friends on this network and elsewhere.
Thank you.
     KEVIN L. COPE, SCSECS President, LSU
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