English Teacher Still Waiting For Someone to Comment on Her Clever Bumper Sticker

Plus, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and S.E. Hinton's 'The Outsiders'

Hello, readers.

If you live in New England like I do, you know that aside from very consistently low temperatures, we recently also experienced a mixture of rain and snow (drink every time someone says “wintry mix”) that left many of us digging ourselves out Monday morning.

This was really our first “snow day” of the season, but it was nothing compared to what people are experiencing in the South.

Yes, you read that right. Parts of Florida, South Carolina, and Texas had to put pause on their normal daily lives of day-drinking, lighting fireworks, and driving their loud pickup trucks to dig themselves out of a record snowfall amid frigid temperatures.

If you think that sounds a little strange, you’re right, people in the South also have loud AND rusty pickup trucks.

No, but this shit isn’t normal. I should not be reading that at least nine people wholly unaccustomed to winter weather died as the result of the death-grip of the cold or icy conditions. Places like Orange Beach, Alabama and Westship Island, Mississippi are experiencing more than 5 inches of snow and wind chills that have temperatures dropping into the teens.

One person in Louisiana recorded a video of snow falling in Cut Off, Louisiana. “I’ve never seen anything like this, and probably never will again,” he commented.

Oh, but that’s where you would be wrong, my friend. Extreme weather is everyone’s new normal.

So yes, eight inches of snowfall recorded at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport on Tuesday will probably not happen again for a while, especially when you realize the previous modern record was 2.7 inches in 1963.

Yet climate scientists (yes, people in the South—that is an actual real job) say that the frequency and intensity of severe weather events like heat waves, heavy precipitation, and wildfires are significantly increasing due to human-induced climate change, making them a common occurrence rather than rare anomalies; this is considered the "new normal" we need to adapt to.

In the North, we are used to this norm…we call it “summer” or “winter.” But the frequency and intensity of many extremes, such as heat waves and heavy precipitation, have increased in recent decades.

We will get walloped with snow one day, but then could see a 50 degree day the next. In the summer, humidity is almost unbearable, but you might freeze at night without a light sweatshirt. In October, Connecticut dealt with a record dry spell that resulted in a massive brush fire on Lamentation Mountain, only miles from where I currently write this (currently, it is a comfortable 8 degrees). Yet many of us will remember in late October of 2011 a blizzard so bad that the governor had to declare a state of emergency. I believe I got somewhere near 18 inches of snow.

Now even though I am no stranger to random and reckless seasonal anomalies, I am new to the amount of questions that I receive about my solar panels which have been a huge help when it comes to offsetting spiking energy costs.

For some reason I was an early-adopter in my circle of friends and family for free solar panels (and still seem to be…they are very helpful, people), let me be the one to help debunk some myths.

To be clear, yes, solar panels still work in the winter (even though they are currently under 2-3 inches of wintry mix). DRINK!

In fact, according to the Department of Energy, “solar panels tend to perform best in cold and sunny climates, because heat interferes with the conversion of sunlight into electricity.”

But the snow must prevent the solar panels from working, right? False! Solar panels are engineered to handle the snow.

Sure, snow cover can temporarily reduce power generation, but the situation often resolves itself as snow slides off or melts due to ambient heat or sunlight. Remember folks, sunlight can still pass through snow to reach the panels. That’s how light works, you science-denying suck-merchant!

I will concede I am not immune to power loss or outages. I would need to pair my solar with a storage battery and those aren’t free (or cheap), so I’m shit out of luck.

I guess on those days of total power loss, I’ll just have to join my Southern friends in the dark, drinking and shooting my fireworks in the cold.

Anyways…

Our top story involves an English teacher waiting for someone to comment on her hilarious bumper sticker that features a grammar joke. Keep waiting….

We also check in on our depressed friend, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

But first, we receive a letter from a long-time reader whose son became a greaser after reading The Outsiders.

Kids yearn for the days of rumbles and chickie-runs.

Dear Editor,
I need your help. I thought my troubled teen would enjoy reading one of my favorite books from childhood—S.E. Hinton's 'The Outsiders.' I thought he would perhaps connect to the characters and learn from Ponyboy's "search for self."

Little did I know that my son would latch onto the more troubling aspects of greaser culture—cuffed jeans, switchblades, and playing chicken. I woke up this morning and found that he had spent all of the money he saved working over the summer on a loud '56 Ford that barely runs.

I'm okay with him rebelling against societal norms but am concerned about his newfound love for Brando and James Dean. I love my son very much and personally don't mind him bopping down the street in a leather jacket, but I am nervous that he is ostracizing himself from "the squares" (like me).

What should I do?

Time. Fate. Magic. Hops.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is feeling the ennui. In fact he's been so down lately that he has removed himself from society and taken to drowning his sorrows in several cases of suds.

In what some are calling a dangerous and perhaps impossible feat, Marquez says he will drink 100 Beers in Solitude in an attempt to capture happiness and overcome the soul-crushing malaise of modern life.

Once he has his beer list in order, Marquez will the drink in complete solitude, unconnected from the trials and tribulations of reality.

"The journey will be physical, then mental, and ultimately spiritual. At one point in my drunken reverie, I might even be visited by one or two ghosts. Either that or I will just be suffering from alcohol poisoning."

So funny, right? Right?

An English teacher at Windham High School in Windham, NH is still waiting for at least one comment about her educational yet witty grammar bumper sticker on her Dodge Stratus.

"I still have yet to even get an amused honk at a red light," she bemoaned.

The teacher has even taken desperate measures, backing into parking spots even though it makes her extremely nervous (especially when students or other staff are watching).

"Maybe the humor is too dark?" she asked nervously. "I mean, I don't actually condone eating children."

Now she'll overthink it for the rest of the life of the car or until she can successfully peel all of it off.