Look around your neighborhood and others that you visit, and you’ll notice that there are two kinds of lawns in Charlotte right now. You have your regular lawns, the ones that haven’t seen more than a few drops of water in months and months. These lawns are identifiable by their brown and crispy nature. Then you have the other kind of lawn. This lawn is green and lush, having been watered every day throughout the summer. Ironically, these lawns are usually located next to each other, the crunchy brown grass of the regular lawns accentuating the healthy green of the other lawns.In yet another case of “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” you also can’t judge a homeowner by her yard, either. After all, the owner of the green yard has been expending all that water on her lawn right in the middle of a huge drought.
In fact, right now the big news is that the governor might have to enforce water conservation on the various counties of North Carolina because some of them aren’t willing to conserve water on their own. I guess if all counties are made up of green-lawners, it will take an order from the governor to put a stop to it. I mean, do you people think water is so plentiful that we can just bathe in the stuff?
I’m well aware of Charlotte’s special situation, since we’re fortunate enough to get our water from the Catawba River basin which, fed by streams from the mountains where rain is still adequate, is in fairly good shape, at least compared to the rest of the state. But just because our situation isn’t as dire as that of the rest of the state doesn’t give us permission to act irresponsibly. If Charlotteans would simply take responsibility for conservation ourselves, it wouldn’t have to be up to Governor Easley to tell us how to do it.
Of course, this isn’t the only way in which we’re all dried up right now. In fact, it may be that the weather is a pathetic metaphor, since we’re drying up financially as well as physically.
That’s how I feel in spite of the fact that I keep hearing comments like “The recession is over! The financial crisis is over!” Then the Dow Jones drops 400 points in one day. Which, I think, is bad. Not that I have the faintest clue as to what it actually means if the Dow drops 400 points or even 12 points. I worked as a technician in the financial industry for a year, and all I managed to pick up was: Dow Jones drops = bad and Dow Jones rises = good. Why this is, well, I just don’t know. I tried to get explanations from many a trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, but whether they’re terribly upset or rapturously happy they only speak one language, the language of cursing. And however accurate a description the word “Goddamn!” is, it just doesn’t explain the Dow Jones to me.
I realize it’s practically a crime to admit such financial ignorance in a town chock full of bankers. But at this point, I just don’t care. I treat the stock market like I treat football and just ask the knowledgeable people around me to kick me if I start cheering at the wrong time.
Despite my lack of knowledge, I’ve managed to generate one hypothesis regarding the economy. Well, actually two, but the other one is just that Alan Greenspan must be some kind of demigod whom everyone studies for signs of impending fortune or doom. Anyway, my hypothesis is that our attitudes create the financial climate. When we all get panicky, the economy heads south. When we all think the economy is booming, it is booming. I conclude that if the economy is dry, it’s our own damn fault. Brilliant analysis, huh?
Maybe more importantly than financial dryness (and maybe not, depending on your mindset), I have a sense that people all over the country are emotionally dry, too. We’ve been through some hardships over the past year, and I think the bumpy ride has finally gotten to us. On several occasions this year, we’ve had warnings of imminent terrorist attacks and we all wait, vigilantly and with bated breath. Nothing, thank goodness, has happened since 9-11. But the waiting and the tension have still sapped many Americans’ emotional strength.
July the Fourth may have done us in, really. There was a lot of fear that something might happen on a day so meaningful to our country, a day we’ve always viewed as sacred, regardless of the degree of our patriotism. Thankfully, the day went off without a hitch, or at least with only a minor hitch in the LAX shooting, but we still experienced the tension of waiting for something bad.
Sadly, unlike the malady of vaginal dryness, there’s no immediately available remedy for dry land. At least we know, though, that rain will come and that we only have to wait it out. Hopefully, when it finally shows up, it will also bring welcome relief to our spirits, and thus to our economy — as well as our lawns.
This article appears in Jul 24-30, 2002.
