For me, along with many others in the Northeast, the sun rises today on an unfamiliar landscape. The towering maple tree in front of our house, once rising vertically toward the sky, is now draped horizontally across the lawn. Our backyard is mangled stew of leaves, branches, and tree limbs.

Apparently people down south, in states frequented by hurricanes, are calling us wusses. They can’t believe we are so thrown by a weather event they consider tepid. After all, by the time Irene got here, she was no longer a hurricane but a tropical storm. But the oaks and maples that have stood here for over a hundred years are not built to handle 65 mile an hour winds. Our coastline is lined with quaint Victorian houses that weren’t built on concrete pilings or wooden stilts, so storm surges are devastating. Each region handles the hand it’s accustomed to being dealt, is what I’d like to point out to these name-callers. In fact, I distinctly remember a trip down south in January, where I personally witnessed the pandemonium caused by four inches of snow.

Maybe those who are calling us soft should try handling a blizzard, or two straight weeks of wind chill temperatures below zero. That would make y’all reconsider the whole wuss thing.