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Yes, yes, let's talk about the weather
Climate chatter is usually the last resort. If at a cocktail party, one is stuck with someone who won't laugh at one's jokes, there is always the weather. If one wants to change the subject, there it is. In My Fair Lady, Eliza Dolittle is told to stick to discussions of atmospheric conditions in polite society because the only things she can pronounce are little vocal exercises ("the rain in Spain. . . "), and the girls chorus in the Pirates of Penzance chatters away about a predicted warm July to distract them from the impropriety of their sister Mabel, making time with a pirate.
Well, anyway, the weather has been a nightmare lately. It sucks the life out of my brain, leaving this soaking depressed and angry residue, and then there's the sweat. I only wish I could glow, as Orson Welles purportedly said Rita Hayworth did.
I'm not alone, I know. The streets are empty and weirdly, the Felix suddenly became rather uninterested in getting his meals from the source, while happily guzzling bottles of food. I suspect this is not because of the "nipple confusion" one is always cautioned against and more because the bottled milk is cooler. It's odd, but if my suspicions are correct I don't blame him. On the other hand, if I'm wrong, I might take it personally.
Several months ago, I read Eric Klinenberg's book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, and it frankly haunts me now, even though I'm ashamed to say my then freshly post-natal mind didn't retain as much of it as I would like. It is astonishing how difficult it is for cities to deal with heat and how quick governments are to try to minimize the problems- in spite of obvious discomfort and the universal propensity to make jokes. (One of the NY dailies ran a piece today about whether wearing a bra that had been frozen would keep a girl cool- apparently it won't.) The Chicago heat wave in question was the week-long nightmare of 1995 and, while it hasn't gotten nearly so hot here for so long, the book had haunted me so that I count the days and morbidly listen to the news. They say it will break tonight with a fit of thunderstorms blowing in from Canada. I hope so, and in a moment I'm going to run outside with the terrier and see if the wind I think I'm hearing reminds me of a tornado in Kansas.
But before I go, I must mention this familiar but horrible story about a family in Raleigh, SC that got split apart for six months because the mother took an (analogue) picture of the father kissing his baby son's navel. (It is not, by the way, hard to spot a possible racist component to this arrest, as this more elaborate article suggests.)
These things do make me feel anxious and helpless, full at once of righteous indignation for these people and their poor children, and frightened about the implications of this story.
I would love to say in this case that it's the heat, but I fear not.
posted by Elise at 7:39 PM
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Hi - I am in Sydney and found my way to yr blog because I typed into google the words 'Yes! yes! let's talk about the weather' looking for the words of the p tter song from the Pirates of Penzance '...howbeautifullybluetheskythegrassisclimingveryhigh'... or however they go
I am writing a bio of two sisters, environmentalists; they kept records of the weather in Sydney over the years 1949 - 1977. Weather and climate are big themes in my 'quiet classic of eco-lit' and I thought of calling a chapter 'Yes! Yes! ...etc' so am amused to have found yr article with the same title
3/22/2006 9:46 PM
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