The ferocious storm that disabled much of Seattle and other parts of western Washington state last night roared across the Cascades and into our valley, only slightly diminished. It was so powerful that the house shook when the first blast hit. The windows howled for hours as the wind tried to pry them out of their frames. The awning over the doors to the deck flapped like the mainmast of a schooner in a high gale. I expected to find it a tangle of canvas and metal in the next block this morning, but it rode out the maelstrom and our only damage was the loss of a couple of roof shingles and a few small tree branches. Doug McLennan, the commander-in-chief of artsjournal.com, was drastically less fortunate.
Doug McC. tells the story on his blog, interrupting his exchange with John Rockwell of The New York Times about standing ovations, a topic Rifftides has visited from time to time. You may read about both — the attack of the tree and standing O’s — in this item from McLennan’s blog, Diacritical.
I observed recently,
If everything deserves a standing ovation, nothing deserves one.
To read that in context, go here.