H/t my friend Bill’s friend, Nadyne!
~Eowyn
…………….
This is from a county emergency manager out in the western part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan after a recent severe snow storm:
Up here in the Northern part of Michigan we just recovered from a weather event of Biblical proportions – a historic blizzard of up to 44″ inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to tens of thousands.
FYI:
Obama did not come.
FEMA did nothing.
No one howled for the government.
No one blamed the government.
No one even uttered an expletive on TV.
Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.
Our Mayors did not blame Obama or anyone else.
Our Governor did not blame Obama or anyone else either.
CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, or NBC did not visit – or even report on this category 5 snow storm.
Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.
No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.
No one looted.
Nobody – I mean Nobody demanded the government do something.
Nobody expected the government to do anything either.
No Larry King, no Bill O’Reilly, no Oprah, no Chris Matthews and no Geraldo Rivera.
No Sean Penn, no Barbra Striesand, no Brad Pitts, no Hollywood types to be found. 
Nope, we just melted the snow for water.
Sent out caravans of SUVs to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.
The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn’t ask for a penny.
Local restaurants made food, and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snow bound families..
Families took in the stranded people – total strangers.
We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.
We put on an extra layers of clothes because up here it is “Work or Die.”
We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for ‘sittin at home’ checks.
Even though a Category 5 blizzard of this scale is not usual, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.
I hope this gets passed on.
Maybe SOME people will get the message….
The world does NOT owe you a living.
Now that’s what I call personal responsibility and being prepared! People who take care of themselves and help others without expecting a handout from the gov’t.
I’ll pass this along my twitter…
Thanks, Debbie! You wield one powerful mama of a Twitter. LOL
That was EPIC! that snow was just as deep as the BS in Washington.
That is a very intense amount of snow. I thought the 3 consecutive blizzards in the midwest was bad.
As another fellow yooper (person who lives in Northern Michigan) I can heartily say that this article is correct…but goes too far.
1 – the government does lots. Without the government we wouldn’t be able to live up here. The plows, salt trucks, and emergency services allow us to live on a daily basis. Without these services those people who help each other could not GET to each other.
2 – the people DO help each other out constantly, and rugged individualism is alive and well. We’ll help pull each other out of a ditch, or give food where it’s needed, or take in strangers, or snow-blow other peoples’ driveways. But it’s not to the Hurricane Katrina extent that this article makes it sound like.
So yes, we get by without complaining, but no it is not without the government’s help. Take this article with a bunch of salt.
The entire point of this article is that helplessness is learned. I’m shocked that anyone exalting self-sufficiency is smeared as an anarchist. Being a victim of a hurricane or blizzard doesn’t make one a “victim of government” entitled to be overcompensated at others’ expense.
This is a very positive and uplifting article for adult Americans, and puts to shame the inane bleating of people who are angry at being inconvenienced by the weather and not cradled by the nanny state as if nothing had happened
Glad to have found this site this morning and will enjoy many more essays here.
Thank you, OPR, and welcome to FOTM!
I live right in the heart of the UP and that storm did NOT happen!
So all the pictures are fakes?
I don’t know where they are taken but I’ve lived here my whole life and we have never had a storm that accumulated 44″. That’s a huge exaggeration
Good grief. If you don’t know where the photos were taken, then how do you know the record snow didn’t happen?
From Wikipedia, with footnoted news sources:
“The Great Lakes have a great effect on most of the [Upper Peninsula of Michigan]. Winters tend to be long, cold, and snowy for most of the peninsula….Lake Superior has the greatest effect on the area, especially the northern and western parts. Lake-effect snow causes many areas to get in excess of 100–250 inches (250–640 cm) of snow per year—especially in the Keweenaw Peninsula and Gogebic County…. Records of 390 inches (990 cm) of snow or more have been set in many communities in this area…. Because of the howling storms across Lake Superior, which cause dramatic amounts of precipitation, it has been said that the lake-effect snow makes the Keweenaw Peninsula the snowiest place east of the Rockies. Herman, Michigan, averages 236 inches (600 cm) of snow every year.”
I suggest that next time you open your mouth to dismiss and discredit, make sure you actually know your facts.
I know my facts. This is not the UP. Period. Ive lived here for 30 years. This photo was not taken in the UP. I dont know where this picture was taken. But it was NOT TAKEN HERE