Is "Snow Emergency" Legally Valid?

We're in the grip of our first snow emergency of the 2013-2014 winter. Winter Storm Cleon. With Dion already following closely.

Now, this isn't about what makes a snow emergency in any specific place. Minnesota and North Dakota would probably laugh at what Cincinnati calls an emergency.Maybe even at what they would call a significant snowfall.

But, the fact is, Cincinnati communities are calling snow emergencies of various levels.

Big whooping deal. It means, for the most part, that communities can write tickets and write off damage to cars parked on the streets.

They say not to go out unless absolutely necessary.
But who decides what is necessary?

I can tell you who does NOT decide.
Service industry workers. They have to go to work or lose their jobs.
The owners of various businesses don't care much if the police say don't go out.
The police don't care much, either. If you are driving slowly and carefully, they aren't likely to chase you down and possibly cause an accident, as well as keeping you both out when you could be getting in somewhere.
But the gas stations HAVE to stay open.
McDonald's MUST stay open.
Facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes, by their very nature, need to stay open. But must they insist on workers coming in in a "snow emergency"?
(I don't know what they could do instead. They should work up snow emergency protocols. Reduced staff, maybe sleep-breaks for people who will remain instead of go out I believe some hospitals do do that.)

Not only do these businesses insist on insisting, they punish those who don't risk life and limb to serve coffee to idiots. (Road personnel excepted from this category.) They write them up(disciplinary action); they brand them as unreliable; they reduce their hours; they even fire them.
They do not pay the fines for tickets received.
They do not pay for damages caused by an accident when their employees should never have been on the road in the first place.
They do not compensate for extra gas burned in longer, slower drives.
They don't pay hospital bills for slip and slide crashes.
They do NOT pay for funerals.

It's not just the service industry. There are factories with this same mindset. Never mind that their product is nonessential -- they have quotas that must be met, come hell or high water. (Hell or high snowdrifts?) The work must be done.

No mere employee can protest any of these disciplinary actions by pleading a snow emergency. The designation has no standing in labor law.

So, a "Snow Emergency" is a money maker for the municipality.
A "Snow Emergency" is an out for insurance companies, who will not pay (easily) for an accident caused when the driver wasn't supposed to be driving.
A "Snow Emergency" is no reason to not go out; thus says American Industry.

So, I ask you, why bother.
Why bother?

They keep coming, and we can't stop it

The damn tornadoes, that's what I'm talking about. Out in Oklahoma, throughout the whole region, they just keep coming.
And there's not a damned thing anyone can do to stop them, or avoid them, or do anything but stand by helplessly while Mother Nature runs her vacuum.
Afterwards, yes, we CAN, and should, and DO rush in to help. It's what we'd hope for, were we the victims.
And we could indeed be the victims, anywhere, any time, any one of us.

Tornadoes are less a regional phenomenon than some disasters. Hurricanes hit shorelines, floods occur near rivers, mudslides are usually in hill country (slide implying gravity), forest fires happen in forests.
Tornadoes, like earthquakes, can happen anywhere.
Therefore, they can happen to you.

Now, they do have preferred playgrounds, like the Great Plains for tornadoes and the San Andreas in California, but they can happen anywhere.

The one advantage in the Plains is that usually one can see (if one is looking) from miles away and hopefully take shelter before the twister gets to you.

Last night, because of heavy rains, many, many people could not see because of the heavy rains and the preternatural darkness of the storm. Many, many people are today still shaking, still fearful, and still looking for loved ones. I hope that everyone locates one another, and that losses stay low. I wish that no one would die in these horrific storms, but that has already happened, and there's nothing I can do to change it.

I wish I could.

I haven't had a close encounter with a twister, although members of my family have. Heck, I have a brother in Kansas. My sister played tag with one last spring.(She won.)A long time ago, one collapsed my grandfather's barn. Then there was the Thanksgiving tornado, mid 90s. I went outside because it was so hot and humid, and heard the trains about a mile away, cane inside and said, "It's still and sticky, and I heard a train. Think we should hide?"
A tornado took down a garage and damaged some trees approximately a mile away.

I still shake at the memory.
The Menace that roars out of the night.
Out of the nowhere.

I can't help you, Oklahoma. Not in the preventive, sheltering, protecting ways you are so in need of.
I wish I could.
I will do what I can to help afterwards, but it will never be enough. It can never be enough.
And there's always going to be guilt that I can be so grateful it wasn't me or mine, and I feel bad about that, too.

Because I know it could have been.
May someday be.
It's good to know you will understand, if that time ever comes.

But for now, I think we would all like to put this into the past.

We are trying to help do just that.

finding fairies

I began with the fractured memories a fractured strobe of a forgotten theme, but one with a title, a phrase that repeats in my mind: The Sinner Cannot Hold.

Over time, I begin to hold the images for a few seconds longer than the strobe flashes. A fountain. Three or four females. Compass points radiating from/relating to the fountain. Many background of red-and-black, projecting a feeling of menace; in contrast to the light and water and spray-rainbows of the women and the fountain

My dear heaven, is my mind, or my muse, heading me into some post-apocalyptic drama? That type of story is not quite my thing, but I'm always willing to learn as a writer. Also as a writer, one must go where one is led.

The women begin to come clearer. They seem to have finely spun wings, although their clothing is heavy and ragged.
They are looking for something, perhaps from the four corners of the world.

Then life gets in the way of the creative process -- or does it?

My granddaughter came for a week long visit. There's nothing new in that. She probably spends one week a month with us. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but that's the average.

This child has a creative imperative of her own. She draws. She sees colors with a depth and intensity that I can observe, but never see. I am in awe of her Great Ability. This three (then) year old child drawing faces on envelopes, calendar squares, and any other available scrap of paper is not so different from my own scrabbling to record a phrase -- such ad 'the sinner cannot hold' on any scrap available to me. It's not so different from a brief description of an image. Not so different from the need to put into words the Visions that Fill the Mind's Eye.

Her last few visits, she had drawn fairies. Tinkerbell is her main model, but she can and will discourse on the differences, although her vocabulary is mainly limited to color. But the different colors do different things.

During her most recent visit, she not only drew her multi colors of fairies, she had to hang them up. Not on the refrigerator. No, that wasn't where they belonged. They had to go on the walls around my bed. They had to be hanged in a precise array, in an exact order, and they had to stay there. A falling fairy was an urgent problem.

It was not until after she went home that I began to wonder. Fairies? Around my bed? The same bed where I dream of fairylike females as a bright spot of air and water as an oasis against a backdrop of dark and angry?

Am I incorporating her fairies into my musings? Is she seeing the fairies I am trying to place and put into words? Are there fairies around my bed that are unseen save by the unconscious mind of the dreamer and the innocent open mind of a child?

Is this an example of the Creative Synchronicity that sometimes happen, especially when there are great grave events in the outer, physical world?

What do you think?