Witch doctors of weather Jan. 9, 2024
The threat of rain hangs over heads again after the
disappointing snow storm over the weekend.
The local new station could not squeeze enough panic out of
a dusting of snow and so promote a new storm that might bring them better
satisfaction.
And if this storm wimps out like the one over the weekend
did, they have the nor’easter set for the weekend, which no doubt will bring
them great satisfaction.
The governor has already declared a state of emergency for
tonight, obviously believing his own climate change hype, and I wonder, if I
change my light bulbs and turn off my hot water heater, the world will be a
better place.
I took a pointless train ride to an event last night, and
have another meeting scheduled for this evening, and I’m pondering whether the
weather will be willing to let me make the journey, risking getting washed out
to see by what the weather people assure me will be a serious weather
phenomenon, no mere dusting of snow, no disappointing impact. If Hoboken
doesn’t flood, then the weather people fill the streets with crocodile tears.
I don’t mind taking the trains, although they only operating
efficiently during rush hour, and so if you get to the station too late you get
to see a series of trains marked “no passengers” rushing back to the rail
yards, while you get frost bitten by the train that is scheduled to arrive at
some ungodly hour, often cut down so that it is overcrowded with all those
other poor suckers forced to wait.
Yesterday’s trip was for what turned out to be a photo opt,
and it is the second trip in a week that I’ve taken to the same place, having
made the stroll from the station at Jersey Avenue to the school on Mongomery.
It is possible to get to various places using the trains, walking from the
station to the event and then back. Fortunately, the weather has been mild
enough to avoid my having to step over mounds of black snow or skate over black
ice. (I knock on wood and wonder if we can skate through winter without a
serious freeze.)
For the most part, people have taken down their holiday
displays, now that we have plunged full force into the new year, this stretch
between holidays that makes winter even more miserable for lack of a day off.
Martin Luther King day aside since many places don’t honor it the way they
might Memorial or Labor Day, let alone Christmas.
I also like riding the trains because I can write while
traveling, something too dangerous to contemplate while driving. And also
because I dislike driving at night, down very dark ghetto streets when trying
to reach Bayonne. It is easy for the most part to predict which passengers get
off at which stops, especially after we leave the mall – the young
professionals with their scooters and face masks getting off at 9 th Street,
the elite people – many of them Asian – getting off in Weehawken, while working
slops clutching bags of tools and such climb out at Bergenline Avenue. I don’t
often see the same faces coming and going, partly because my schedule is so unpredictable,
I rarely arrive at the station at the same time day or night.
When I worked at the Bayonne office, I often saw the same
people getting on and off the train, since I travelled the same time there and
back every day.
But I see the same types of people, the school kids, the
housewives, the laborers, the office workers, all clinging to this life line
that allows them to make connections, some of which are so remote, they spend a
majority of their lives coming and going.
I don’t feel sorry for them. This is what life is all about,
routine twisted into ritual, as we pay our dues to the new gods of climate
change, the way generations before us did to the more conventional gods before
science became religion and we have been forced to accept on faith things
scientists and weather people cannot actually prove with fact.
Thus, we get super storms that aren’t super, and nor’easters
that smack up from north, west, and south as well, although not with the punch
our media needs to keep us scared to get out of bed every day.
All this is about fear mongering and keeping people
uncertain about what to expect, good or bad, right or wrong. We must listen to
these idiots because we have no other preachers we can trust, even when the
witch doctors of today are no more reliable than the witch doctors of
yesteryear.
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