I was up in Connecticut when Hurricane Bob struck. I was far enough from the eye, that it was more like a really bad thunderstorm, but we were close enough to the coastline that we helped out with some of the boat and dock preparation. And the whole time I was thinking, Bob? Really? Bob is not a scary or even serious name. I recognize that there are a lot of rules about hurricane naming, order of names, concurrent alphabets for the Atlantic and Pacific, use of female and male names and so on. But it was with Bob that I began to wonder if by restarting the alphabet each year, we had somehow run out of good names. Or if the namers had run out, since one imagines there are a lot of names that haven't been utilized.
I was thinking of this as I hear that Flossie is headed for Hawai'i. I mean, Flossie? I do recognize that you don't want to use up really good names, for example, I imagine there are not a lot of people naming their children Katrina right now, and it's a lovely name that right now has a negative association for people. But surely we can do better than Flossie.
Rants About New (and old) Things
