Nothing to Watch. Nothing to Read...

     I'm not going to argue with you about this nor will I bother to defend myself.  Maybe this just happens to certain individuals when they get old--like the characters in The Last Angry Man or Network.  I'm giving up my subscription to the Times, stopping all contributions to stuff like WBAI or PBS.  If I can use a cheap antenna, I will drop my subscription to Spectrum Cable, (which took over from Time Warner), a legally licensed crime syndicate that collects $184 a month for terrible service.  Spectrum used to provide access to RT, the Russian outlet from which one could occasionally get access to world events unfiltered by the NSA, but after the Mueller investigation began, Spectrum must have gotten the call and dropped RT.  (Oddly, for a while they also dropped access to NHK, the Japanese outlet, but then either had second thoughts or were told by the manufacturers of consent that, though like most foreign news organizations NHK had news and human interest stories far superior to the junk on U.S. outlets, since it rarely displayed any taste for battle with the USIA, it could resume showing us how to make paper cranes and appreciate the finer points of Noh theater.)
       The net result of all this is that, as I have feared for some time would eventually occur, there really isn't anywhere one can access information about what is actually happening either here in the U.S. or around the world.  Of course, some who are reading this are probably asking themselves, "Does this guy really expect to learn anything from electronic media?"  Well, yeah, that would be nice.  I love television. I love its potential for immediacy--CNN putting its viewers virtually in the streets of Moscow as tanks clanked along toward the Congress in 1993 or RT's RAW allowing you to feel part of the Yellow Jacket demonstrations in the streets of Paris just a short time ago.  Or you could hear at least a handful of individuals with the courage to speak truth to power.  Once, even PBS gave opportunities for expression to a wide spectrum of political opinion. but, of course, that's no longer allowed.  (As Mitt Romney was heard to mutter during his 2012 presidential campaign, "We may have to get rid of Big Bird."  PBS in its original configuration was just too dangerous for post-Reagan America.)  And even if one gives up all hope for televised news, what about reading for a change?  Right.  Like all those left wing journals--Monthly Review or the World Socialist Web Site.  Have you looked at those recently?  Great stuff if you want to read the ongoing debate between followers of Trotsky and Stalin.
      So...I'm not sure where I will turn now.  Maybe it's for the best.  I'll be forced to get a bit more inventive in my quest for truth.  Kicking my way through food channels, "tutti a tavola a mangiare!", transgender superheros taking on injustice, the drugged hordes, wires emanating from their ears, eyes glazed over as they scale pencil skyscrapers, reaching for the stars.

Enemy of the People

 When my brother sold his condo in Jersey and headed south to Florida, I never thought I would come to envy him.  My three brothers and I are all in our seventies now, though, and men of our age begin to feel a chill.  When the temperature in our apartments falls below 75 degrees or so, we begin looking through our closets for a cardigan sweater, typically a grey or beige affair that buttons up the front and will help keep our cold, brittle bones from rattling.  New York dwellings had a reputation for being overheated during cold winter months, so much so that steamed over windows have long been icons of our fair city.  With rising fuel costs, however, building managers began to adhere to strict legal guidelines.  If the outside temperature goes below 55 degrees, the heat will click on; otherwise, you're on your own, Nanook afloat on an urban iceberg.  The truth of the matter is indoor temperatures from 56 to the low 70s  leave most New Yorkers, (to borrow their word) "freezing."

And this past winter, though far from the coldest we, (especially us old codgers), have ever experienced, seemed grim, grey and endless.  We seemed stuck in a zone of cold just maddeningly around that 55 degree mark.  It was never quite cold enough for janitors to turn on the boilers, but it was never warm enough to be comfortable in one's home, and it never ended.

What could account for this strange weather phenomenon?  Most of us New Yorkers knew that climate change, often called global
warming by the careless, could actually give us colder weather under certain conditions.  After all, we had seen The Day After Tomorrow the movie which shows New Yorkers forced to take refuge in the library on 42nd Street and burn books to keep from freezing to death.  We knew that climate change could freeze us before it grilled us to death.  But why weren't our local weather forecasters talking about this?  Why particularly wasn't Lonnie Quinn, CBS' matinee idol forecaster, admired as much for his sterling character and devoted work ethic as for his good looks, coming clean, giving us the low down?

I decided to do my own research.  I just knew they weren't telling us the truth in the media.  What else was new?  Lots of corporate types don't like to acknowledge climate change in the first place--whether the gods are responsible or irresponsible human beings.  Weather forecasters have been lying about the weather forever.  It's bad for business so their bosses instruct them to lie.  Henrik Ibsen laid it all out for us over a hundred years ago in his gripping play on the subject, An Enemy of the People.  I began by turning to Google Maps.  The result was truly shocking.  Where one expected to find a large island of ice at the geographic pole, there was nothing but a large expanse of blue ocean.  I began clicking on the zoom slider, trying to get a closer view, but no matter, the screen stayed blue.  I had heard predictions that the Arctic ice would soon melt entirely, but the map indicated that it was already gone.  No ice.  No barber pole.  No Santa.  No reindeer harnessed to a sleigh.  Nothing but blue water.  The unthinkable had already occurred and no one had bothered to tell us.  (Closer reading reveals that the amount of ice at the North Pole is a matter of some debate.  I will leave it to the reader to do further research on this.)

Well, I thought as winter was drawing to a close, with the onset of spring I will be warm; I will open the windows and enjoy the balmy and sweet-scented breezes of spring, the joy of living in a temperate zone.  It is now May 10th as I put down these thoughts, and, though the thermometer is no longer stuck in the 55 degree range, plus or minus a few points, it is now stuck in the 60 degree range plus or minus a few points.  It must be those calving glaciers.  You can't keep dropping chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island into the sea and not expect it to have consequences, I muttered to myself.  I thought back to years in New York City's public school classrooms lacking air conditioning when temperatures in early May might be in excess of 90 degrees and teachers and students alike studied their calendars, counting the days until summer recess. 55 degrees or 65 degrees seemed to make little difference to my old bones.  I was still cold, and, beyond cold, anxious for a whole series of days in which the sun would show itself as it once did in the old times before the climate had changed. 

Ghost Busters?

Has the weather seemed a bit strange lately?  Does the long series of gray days make you begin to suspect that you live in Scandinavia, a grim land where people are perennially glum and depressed and contemplate suicide?  If you haven't already given up watching your televised local news, (or are just too frightened to watch), has the frequency and nature of macabre crimes, that is, the violent attacks on children, the elderly, the most vulnerable begun to freak you out?  Have you begun to suspect that the Devil really does exist and that he or she is frantically, spasmodically moving from one attack to another on our lives?  Has political correctness inexorably progressed to the point where gender and race, basically all human relations have evolved into eerie parodies of what they once meant?  Have the arts ceased to have a calming effect, to be able to please or comfort you when you most need a little pleasure or comfort?  Are you worried about your health or paying the medical bills required to give relief from your ailments?  Are you worried about money in general?  Do even the most petty financial transactions seem fraught with danger?  Is it not just banks and large corporations that are out to get you, circling you like so many sharks waiting to take bites out of your flesh, but the vendor of bread or chewing gum?  When that eerie blue glow suffused the skies of our fair city a little while ago, did the fear with which you reacted startle you?  Does the prospect of a nuclear attack seem real in ways it hasn't since good Sister Carmencita directed you to take shelter under your wooden desk until the all clear sounded?  Is it possible that the relief that many American voters felt when it was clear that Hillary would not occupy the Oval Office and lay out war plans on her desk with John Bol...  Oooh.  Wait.  Wait just one little minute here.  Oh.