The Istoriaphile’s Corner

We like to scare ourselves with autumn stories.  Whether the celebration is Halloween, Guy Fawkes Day, or Dia de Los Muertos, this is the season when we remember that life is chancy and death is real.  Because these truths are frightening, most of us arrange our lives to minimize danger and invent spooky stories for fun.   It took Sebastian Junger to remind us that some folks still earn a living doing hazardous work and watch the skies of October with fear. Those who live by and on the sea never forget that hurricanes arrive with the fall. The Perfect Storm is an account of a Halloween storm that  landlubbers will never forget. Two dozen years have passed since a low-pressure system hit the remnants of Hurricane Grace and turned it into a sea-going cyclone.  Three people outside watching the storm were swept away by the winds and two more died when their boat sank off Staten Island.  A Coast-Guard helicopter crashed in the storm and one of the paratroopers was lost at sea but if you ask readers about that storm, they’ll tell you about the fishing ship, Andrea Gail.  They may even remember the names of her crew,…