QotD: Fear

There were two sounds of terror: the Emergency Broadcast Signal, which you learned was the sound of the end of the world, and the sirens, which announced tornados. I had a Wizard-of-Oz notion of twisters — evil dirty-cotton fingers that wrote death on the land, throwing up fences and cows and houses. Before you understand death, or sociopathy, or evil in any form, you understand the implacable nature of, well, Nature, and how there's nothing you can do about it. Dad cannot make it go away. The President cannot command it to cease. It can kill Bozo and Mr. Greenjeans. It comes, and it is done when it's done. I was born in the year of a Tornado, and when I would look at the newspapers my parents had saved, it was like looking at the Pompeii Daily the day Vesuvius burst.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2006-05-04