The Tri-State Metropolitan area is in the grips of a heat-wave of historical proportions. Since Wednesday New York has been pelted by solar rays that have turned the Big Apple to the Baked Apple to the Cajun Blackened Apple (ain't it ungla-more-ays). Yesterday Newark airport reported temperatures of 106 degrees Fahrenheit and today many locales in NYC are supposed to experience highs over 100. Couple that with some stifling humidity and no relief from any pop-up thunderstorms and you've got a truly uncomfortable and even dangerous situation.
I'll leave it to esteemed climatologists such as Al Gore or Michael Moore to determine whether this is reflective of normal cyclical ups and downs or of an alarming pattern of Global Climate Change brought about by human misbehavior. (Reportedly it has not been this hot on July 22nd since 1951). But I do feel qualified to weigh in on an apparent change in human nature. Whether or not the weather is significantly and/or permanently more brutal now than it was when we were kids we certainly complain, moan and kvetch about it more now than we did then.
I could hardly believe my ears listening to the radio on my morning commute. Nary a word about the debt-ceiling crisis or any details on the Levy Aaron prosecution but incessant, obsessive coverage about the hot weather. Interviews with Con Edison and LIPA executives to see if the power grid is equal to the imminent AC Armageddon, man-in-the-street interviews to make the astounding discovery that people are uncomfortable and would rather be someplace cooler (why not just replay last heat waves man-in-the-street interviews ?) and incessant repetitions about the existence of "Cooling Centers" and the need to stay hydrated dominated the airwaves. One would have thought that the weather was what was happening in the city rather than the mere stage and backdrop for what was happening in the city. I felt offended and diminished as a New Yorker and thought I was back in some Kansas hamlet where Church Bake-Sales and cats caught up in trees are deemed newsworthy.
When I was young weather reports took about 30 seconds. One heard the highs the lows and whether or not it would rain. Now we obsess over wind-chill factors and it's summertime alter-ego, real-feel temperatures, barometric pressure, Canadian Air Masses, storm "systems", "pop-up" storms and Nor'easters et al. Whatever the weather happens to be on any given day, it is consistently kevtch-worthy.
The spike in whining, moaning, obsessing and kvetching is probably due to the perfect-storm like confluence of an aging population, the easy availability of prescription and over-the-counter pain-killers, the increasing ubiquitousness of central air-conditioning, and a hedonistic culture in which Comfort is King and Pleasure is Prince. Any notions of stoicism or ennobling suffering have long since been jettisoned. This seems to be a permanent Sociological change and not something cyclical so I hope that you'll forgive me the nostalgia and sentimentality that I'm about to indulge in.
Give me Tom Brokaws "Greatest Generation". To beat the heat in 1951 they would have stripped down to their refugee T-Shirts, slept in parks or on fire escapes and sat in front of a block of ice backed by an electric fan with metal blades. Most fetching of all, they would've gone about their business and kept their mouths shut about how hot it is.
12 comments:
People need to complain about something and it needs to be something they can understand.
Most people don't understand what the debt crisis is about and Afghanistan is too far away. But the weather? That's easy.
I dunno. Aren't our personal lives messed up and convoluted enough to kvetch about?
Thanks for saying what I've been thinking.
What radio station do you listen to? After much frustration with the local FM and AM stations I've been happy with 820 WNYC. It was all debt ceiling talk when I listened this morning.
Also, you're forgetting something. There's the temperature, the heat index which is what it feels like when you factor in humidity, and the Chareidi heat index which is what it feels like with the humidity under a wool coat and fur hat. :)
I think in the frum communities it's not "Global warming" but "Oylam warming" in which it's been thousands of years since the oylam has experienced temperatures like these! It wasn't hot like this for the oylam in NYC, not in Poland, not in Lithuania...
ah but I am colorblind and for the Ohlahm in Tunis, Libya, Iraq (Bavel)and Morocco it's been much hotter.
Nu, so what's your radio station of choice?
The FAN 660. I am a masochist.
Clearly. Are you upset they spend all day talking about sports too?
I'd have no problem with the weather channel obsessing about the heat wave. But it annoys me to hear a general news station do so. I was listening to 1010 and 880. It's also annoying to hear folks comfortably ensconced in climate controlled environments hocking about it incessantly.
Well, they don't do any real reporting nowadays due to limited budgets so they talk about the easy stuff.
Also, you have to remember this: 1010 does traffic and weather on the 1's and 880 does it on the 8's. So, you're on a 10 minute cycle. The actual traffic and weather take about a minute. So, even without the limited news reporting you're hearing about the weather about every 9 minutes.
It's stuff like that that drove me crazy with those channels. What drove me crazy with FM channels was that they'd either play the same maybe 50 songs in a loop or had DJ's or producers who genuinely didn't know that artists like the Beatles or Dylan had more than 3 hits (talking about 104.3 in particular).
Much much happier with WNYC 820 (our shul's rabbi recommended it to me, so it's clearly what Hashem wants me to listen to). You get real reporting and it's not solely US centered, you ACTUALLY hear about what's going on in the rest of the world - imagine that!
"The FAN 660. I am a masochist."
And a Mets fan. Or is it the Dodgers?
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