When Did New Englanders Become So Incapable?

It's February.

It's Boston.

IT SNOWS.

Oh. My. God.

When did we become so utterly incapable of managing in the snow?

This is the town that dug out with nonchalance and dignity during the Blizzard of '78. We walked to the store. We shopped for our neighbors. My mother built an igloo and kicked us out of the house. We were happy to go—after all, we had an igloo to play in, and let's be honest: How cool was that?

Yet now, with a WHOPPING five inches of snow due, the New England Emergency Management Agency and the Governor send state workers home early and encourage other businesses to do the same.

I simply don't understand it. I don't understand people who complain about the snow. I cannot comprehend those who wonder when it will stop snowing (early- to mid-April, people, that's when). Why do they live here? Why do they not understand that we live at 42.37 degrees North latitude, and hence, an area subject to a distinct, four-season climate, impacted by often severe changes in temperature resulting from a complex set of topographic and meteorologic factors into which I will not digress here?

(And I know that there are those of you who will claim some weird Puritan/Pilgrim attitude of liking to complain or a cultural memory steeped in a desire for hardship, etc., etc., but I don't buy it.)

So, to those of you who are freaked out, unhappy, or otherwise irritated by snow, I say this:

Move to Phoenix.