SOMERVILLE, MA -- When I moved to the Metro-Boston area from South Florida eight months ago, I'd heard horror stories about the winter wasteland that is New England, but nothing could have prepared me for the devastation that God hath wrought today with what will surely come to be known as the New England Death-Blizzard of Oh-Four (or NED-BOOF).
The region has been buried under one, two, in some places as many as four inches of snow, leaving local residents hunkered down in the their homes, probably in despair, awaiting the sweet release of death by freezing.
Along Washington Street in Somerville, this reporter discovered a window-mount air conditioning unit that had been hauled out onto the sidewalk, apparently by Somervillains who don't expect to live to see the Spring.
Also along that street, two MBTA buses were seen displaying "Out of Service" in place of their normal route designations. Had their destinations been destroyed by the blizzard? They drove off before the drivers could be questioned, but it seems reasonable to assume that many local neighborhoods have been wiped clean off the map by the fluffy white juggernaut of NED-BOOF.
On the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, a mob of students gathered near the John Harvard statue, rendered partly unrecognizable from the back by the accumulation, probably to question a school official about whether the institution would survive. The talk among the crowd is that school administrators had been burning tuition money for warmth.
Elected officials are mounting a campaign of denial the likes of which Americans have not seen since the last time they watched the evening news. No word has been released on the number of deaths caused by the storm, and there is no information available on what role FEMA or the National Guard may play in returning some sense of normalcy to this battered community.
