I had to take a break from articulating the affirmative defense of entrapment because of the irresistible impulse to describe what this storm means to me.

The greater New England area is enslaved to a massive snow-storm that paralyzed nearly a half million Americans in the mid-west and killed 27. This morning I woke up before it arrived, and ran my favorite 8 mile loop around this area. Came home, drank coffee, and began to study.

As I listened to the radio, the traffic reporters were aroused by the vehicular paralysis spread far and wide over the Commonwealth. They would expose the wonders of gridlock and “brake-riding” as if it were a cardinal virtue. People rushed to the nearby markets to stock on provisions and solace – A most animalistic behavior.

Others rushed outside to speak with neighbors upon the forecasted ignominious plunder mother nature will bestow upon the northeast. I sit and sip my coffee and work.

The school children run out of school with their parents and sport utility vehicles, complete with xenon headlamps, gargantuan tires, and in-seat DVD players, only to become frantic and neurotic inside these monsters of passive safety.

Being a runner has a physiological side effect that literally alters the way human cognition occurs. It releases the stresses and energies and fears that the body normally generates. It heightens the senses and awareness. And it makes one far more placid that others in a moment of great crisis.

Fear, panic, and utter chaos produce nothing. They are merely airborne diseseases that spread faster and more chronically than the nastiest of infections. Nothing positive comes from aggrandizing something that is beyond one’s control.

But sitting here and not being captivated by the anarchy outside gives me great solace and comfort in an hour of great peril.