Chez Chesler

MyFoxBoston After a week of unseasonably but pleasantly cool temperatures, summer is hitting us with one last heat wave. There is a heat and humidity alert out, and we may tie or break the August 25 record high 96 degrees. That was the lead story on last night's Fox news (Boston's WFXT 25). The meteorologist (I think Kevin Lemanowicz) gave a brief report on the heat, and anchor Kim Carrigan commented "Wow, isn't this kind of late to have record-breaking heat?" Uh Kim, they have records for every day (and month, and season, and location...) It's like baseball. It is pretty late in August to have a record-breaker for August, or for the year, but on any day the high can be higher than any other high ever recorded for that day, or for that matter lower than any other daily high for the day; same for the low which can be colder than the coldest low for that day, or warmer than the warmest low. Granted, a record-breaking high during warm seasons, and a record-breaking low during cold seasons, is more newsworthy, but either way it's a record. I'm reminded of a dance I went to at a neighboring college (now a neighboring university.) I'd been a good student in high school, which is how I'd gotten in to Harvard, but I struggled as an undergraduate. I struck up a conversation with a young woman from that college (now a university) and she said "You go to Harvard? You must be smart. I bet you get all As." It didn't work like that then either.

If you leave the car windows closed on a sunny day, it gets very hot inside. Suppose you have to dry something inside the car -- for instance the seats (because you left the windows open and it rained) or a towel. Will it dry faster if you leave the windows closed, so it gets very hot, or will it dry faster if the windows are open, so that from time to time there is a breeze to put dryer air over the wet thing? Similarly, if you're pre-soaking laundry, and you put a capful of laundry detergent in the washing machine and some water, will it be more effective with less water, so the stains are exposed to a higher concentration of detergent, or will it be more effective if the tub is full, so there is more water to carry away the dirt? I finally figured out that if I put a capful of detergent in the tub and add some water, then I won't have to worry about putting detergent on top of my clothes and making bleached spots when I come down with an armful of laundry. (I hear they have a new invention called a laundry basket, but that's too high-tech for me.) I've been pre-filling the washing machine with cold water. After it sits there for a while, it gets warm. Is that cooling my basement at all, because the heat is coming from somewhere? But if the lid is open, is the water evaporating and making the basement too damp?

Labels: conundrum, quality, quantity

The Scooter is dead.

I'm too young to have seen him play, but I grew up with his Money Store ads and his announcing the Yankees on the radio.

I remember one call from a late 1970s summer, a pennant race not unlike the current season, except then the pennant meant more, and I had not yet gone over to the dark side.  Rizzuto's call went something like this: "It's a long fly ball.  It's going... It's going! (pause) Holy Cow!  (pause) What a fantastic one-handed catch!"

Baseball was a lot more fun to listen to when Rizzuto was announcing.

I never got around to sending him a fan letter, and I never got around to sending one to Milton Friedman before his death last fall.  I think that leaves only Yogi Berra still alive of my childhood heroes.

Labels: Heroes, obituary, Rizzuto, Scooter, Yankees

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ?

The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin ;
The guests are met, the feast is set :
May'st hear the merry din.'

 

I've always believed in experiencing art with as many senses as possible, for better understanding.  When I watched Hamlet with my kids (it's a ghost story!) I served Havarti.  I read them The Cremation of Sam McGee while waiting for a school bus in sub-zero weather.  Last week I realized a long-held dream, reading to them Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner while out at sea (OK, we were barely out of sight of land while taking a ferry across Long Island Sound.)

The two boys wandered off, but my daughter stayed to hear the end, which I reached just as we pulled into Port Jefferson harbor.  I don't know how much they got, but like so many things that one understands only when older (10 is not about Bo Derek wearing nothing but corn-rows, it's about a mid-life crisis) I finally understand the poem.  It's about old people forcing young people to miss parties by telling long, pointless stories!

 

Labels: coleridge, mariner, poetry