There’s cold and then there’s the Polar Vortex

I’ve just come back from a walk in the 7-degree temperature of New York City. I walked uptown ten blocks and then back downtown and I feel frozen, literally.

This just isn’t cold. It’s COOOLLLDAMNIT, down to the bones, the muscles and the mind. You just begin to feel everything congealing like snow to ice. It’s what explorers of the arctic must feel trekking along some tundra. It’s what I feel walking Broadway or West End Avenues, where they meet, like the Polar and Vortex have met, married and reached their hot ice, smoking hands inside your Eddie Bauer down parka. Plus The North Face wool sweater zipped to your chin, the Eddie Bauer shirt, the Jerzis long-sleeve T-shirt, up and through the down hood, wool cap and back down to the leather wool-lined gloves. Unfortunately, the Mid-West is getting smacked around by both hands, the wind and cold of the Polar Vortex, too.

It’s eerie the way the whistling wind carries the freezing cold and snow. Now you know what a piece of dead meat feels like when it’s wrapped in wax paper and put in a freezer, and comes out hard as a rock that you can bang on the counter top and still take a couple of hours to soften. I’m doing that right now. Any more time outside and I’ll end up in one of those ambulances screaming around the city. Fortunately, I duck into one of the many Starbuck’s for a café latte. The collective warmth hits me: both the herd of people surrounding me with books, papers, i-Pads, laptops, APPS, Apples, and eyeing each other, feeling the warmth seep back into their bodies and minds, once more verifying the process of “climate change” for true believers. Here, we huddle anonymously, myself included, scrawling in my notebook with an old-fashioned Pilot G-2 07 pen, about “climate change.”

Something is happening, here as in California experiencing hot weather and sustained draughts. I watched that process when my in-laws lived in southern Colorado and the heat was so intense you had to wait until sundown for a breeze to come off the desert and cool the land. Even bathwater had to be saved then scooped up and out to pour on plants and in birdbaths, which is a passion of my aged father and mother-in-law. The heat was like that, hot. I have a reader who lives in San Diego, complaining to a friend up north about the heat—more climate change. But they’re Republicans and that’s not in the playbook. It’s written off as part of “Intelligent Design.” Go know.

But back in NYC, we have to suck it all up, the concrete desert of summer and the Polar Vortex of winter. We’re on a slippery slope of weather up here, not to mention, hurricanes, storms, Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Sandy the last two that turned the tri-state area, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, upside down, literally destroying hundreds of miles of coastline.

So, where can you be safe, or at least more balanced, warm, as if you were eating in the Broadway Pizza restaurant? One of its owners, Mohammed, suggested I visit his native home of Morocco, only a six-hour journey by air from New York City. I doubted him at first, but when I looked on one of my “Doctors Without Borders” maps, there was the straight line trajectory moving Southeast to the coast of Casablanca, Marrakech, described as beautiful by Mohammed, landing below Spain, Paris, all of Europe. His brother Sharif suggested I visit their beautiful homeland. I said “maybe someday,” flashing on scenes from Casablanca, neighboring Algeria, Albert Camus and Franz Fanon, knowing “maybe” was a copout.

For New Yorkers, NYC seems to be the Mecca of chaos we need to flourish, sucking up whatever life throws at us. Even the thought of living in Florida gives me the shivers. My daughter’s in-laws have a place in Boynton Beach, which despite many invitations, my wife and I have only visited once for a week, as storms hit the coast. For now, I’m bowing my head to the Polar Vortex, hoping for an early spring.

As the poet Shelley said, “If winter is here can spring be far behind.” Yet, given the battering the planet has taken from these last two hundred years of hydrocarbons, described by Wikipedia thusly: “Strictly speaking, fossil fuels are a renewable resource. They are continually being formed via natural processes as plants and animals die and then decompose and become trapped beneath sediment. However, fossil fuels are generally considered to be non-renewable resources because they take millions of years to form, and known viable reserves are being depleted much faster than new ones are being made.

“The use of fossil fuels raises serious environmental concerns. The burning of fossil fuels produces around 21.3 billion tonnes (21.3 gigatonnes) of carbon dioxide (CO₂) per year, but it is estimated that natural processes can only absorb about half of that amount, so there is a net increase of 10.65 billion tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year (one tonne of atmospheric carbon is equivalent to 44/12 or 3.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide). Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases that enhances radioactive forcing and contributes to global warming, causing the average surface temperature of the Earth to rise in response, which the vast majority of climate scientists agree will cause major adverse effects. A global movement towards the generation of renewable energy is therefore under way to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.”

Thus, we already have hybrid cars that to some degree do not use fossil fuels. The future points to more of them, including solar, water, and wind energy. Meanwhile, being your typical human beanhead, I keep wishing for what we don’t have, whether it’s political, scientific, or even geological. Fortunately, the deity hasn’t lost total patience with her children. And for now, we need to follow her lead, by riding out the storm(s), including Polar Vortexes, one way or the other, and save our complaining for blogs, books, poems and the rest of media, which brings all the various scenarios to us whether we like them or not, realized or veiled as to the essential role they play in creation.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.