i read, one of success of humans, is they, unlike other animals, do not suit themselves to an environment, but rather, create environments that suit them (from materials at hand.)
i think too, humans have an amazing capacity to accept new environments--and to quickly come to terms coping with them.
We have all seen photo's of flooded areas, where hours after the flood, the main road of town, instead of being a street, has become a 'channel'--and out of 'no where '--well, in reality, out of garages, and sheds, and other outbuilding--have come canoes, rowboats, inflatables, and small outboarders, and now the police are cruising in boats..as it it was the most normal thing..
and, in somes it is! it becomes the new normal for the duration of the flood, and then roads go back to being roads, and the police go back to driving cruisers. we switch between one mode of normal, into another, and back again, almost easily.
on the fateful day in september a few years ago, there was very little panic. thousand of people, evacuated from buidings and headed 'away' (my building was a 1/4 mile away and evacuated).--
subways weren't running nor for the mostpart, buses. bridges and tunnels were closed. there wasn't any panic, just a steady, somber parade of people moving north. (about the only way you could go!)
people talked with each other, and interacted, in quiet ways.
NYers' have dealt with blackouts, and other disasters before.. no one looks forward to a 15 mile walk home.. but we trudge along, accustom to the fact that things break down, in a rather catastrofic way, if not regularly, at least several times in one lifetime.
that day was perhaps a 1000 year experience--just as floods are measured in such likelyhoods--with a certain level of flooding occurs every 10 years, every 100 years or so there is an exceptional flood, and every 1000 years, a flood beyond all known proportion.
just as people who live near rivers learn to live with floods, so, NYers learn to live with 'unusual' inconvienences.
