Quick Notes To Pundits
Mr. Broder you were “pwnd” by my octogenarian Mother: the Carter’s daughter is named Amy, not Chelsea.
Dr. Gupta: a 60° temperature differential is not good for healthy people, much less people getting over chemotherapy, like Senator Kennedy. Check with the military or sports medicine people, as well as looking at the latest research on the treatment of hypothermia. As a supposed brain surgeon you might consider: “Physician heal thyself.”
The committee that decided to switch the Air Force’s wool greatcoat for a polyester overcoat should be required to guard aircraft on the Minot flight line all winter. Lord, but those guys looked frozen. All services need a winter dress hat of some kind for these occasions.
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Polyester overcoats may be adequate for the worst weather Houston has to offer. But if I ever move northward, I’ll be glad I kept my late father’s Navy pea coat. It weighs five tons (wool isn’t light in any sense of the word). My father assured me that he would come in from standing watch, break the ice off that coat (yes, break it off) and survive to stand another watch. Polyester is great in its context, but it is not for true cold-weather gear.
I felt really bad for the bandsmen today… and the clarinetist in the “Tashi”-style quartet. Wind instrument players face special burdens in cold weather, both hazards to their lips and fingers and hazards to their instruments, especially actual woodwinds like clarinets. I hate playing outdoors when it’s really cold, but wind players have it worse: they lose skin… and crack instruments.
Steve Bates´s last blog post..Afterthoughts
Wool naturally sheds a lot of water and will stay warm even if wet, polyester is for looks and ease of maintenance. Natural fibers are just better.
That was instrument abuse. I know people want to be part of it, but there should be some common sense in the mix. There are going to be a lot of sick kids and people going home, and if anyone had a cold or the flu, it just got spread to the rest of the nation.
That’s one on the reasons my Mother won’t fly this time of the year – it’s too easy to pick up something in a airport or the aircraft, even with a mask. Too many people, too close together – it’s asking for an epidemic.
Most of us wind players have a “outside” instrument especially for outside gigs. Yo-Yo Ma had a loaner, odds are Perlman did, too.
McGill should NOT have taken his good horn out there. He would have sounded just as good on an intermediate horn. But I guess his Backun barrel wouldn’t fit (that was a blatant advertisement on his part).
Moi´s last blog post..Bye Bye Bye Bye ASSWIPE
I would assume that string players would use old practice instruments, although there are ways to provide heat at a fixed location and the Air Force has them at Andrews.
Just the thought of putting metal to my face in temperatures like that makes me shiver. I don’t think I could maintain the air control needed for a flute or fife under conditions like that, even if I could normally play one. They should have used bagpipes – no one would notice the problem, and they are readily repairable. They are, after all, a battlefield instrument. The kilts would be a problem though.
…I didn’t have the opportunity to see any of the day “live” because I’m not supposed to live-stream that sort of stuff at work and – let’s be honest here – everybody in my little corner of the federal world seemed to be live-streaming the thing anyway (which is a downer bad thing when there isn’t enough bandwidth because of all those other bad rule-breakers). Still, my normal grumpy dismissal of the descriptions of today’s weather was tempered by the descriptions of people having to walk miles and stand for hours in those temperatures when most of the hundreds of thousands and the marchers in the parades aren’t equipped or used to spending those kinds of hours out in that sort of weather…
…and Dr. Gupta could do us all a favor by waking up tomorrow morning in the throes of a “I coulda had a V-8” moment and announce that he doesn’t really want to be Surgeon General. That would be a bit of Change We Could Believe In…
Jack K., the Grumpy Forester´s last blog post..At Last
What Moi said. No one takes his or her best horn out in that weather if they have any choice in the matter. String instruments are more likely to survive, though on one occasion, indoors, when the weather was 5°F outdoors and the indoor humidity was about zero, I cracked the soundboard of my harpsichord. (Harpsichord soundboard cracks are frequently harmless; this one did no real damage to the instrument.) But the oboist I worked with for years had an oboe she kept specially for outdoor jobs in inclement weather; we even performed one Christmas in the snow in Hermann Park. Her oboe did not crack, but I do NOT recommend doing that!
Jack, back when I went through Survival School in two feet of fresh snow outside of Spokane, I had the gear for it, but some of those high school bands coming from Hawaii and Florida have never had to deal with anything like that. The parade was delayed an hour and the route was two miles long. There was a steady 10+ mph wind to bringing down the wind chill. It wouldn’t have bothered me back in the day, but no way I would try it today.
If I had been Michelle Obama, I would have dumped that Isabel Toledo dress for a Carbela’s sledding suit and mukluks in a flash and told the “fashion police” to stuff it.
Everyone who took a guitar to Alaska kept it in a plastic bag with a damp sponge to avoid it coming apart, and that’s with the terracotta humidifiers on every radiator to try to provide some humidity in the barracks. The people in housing were constantly having their furniture fall apart, especially the guys who rotated in from Asia. My brother had to re-assemble all of the furniture he brought back from Hong Kong the first winter back in New York, and he has a humidifier built into his furnace. Wood and dry winter air don’t mix.
“If I had been Michelle Obama, I would have dumped that Isabel Toledo dress for a Carbela’s sledding suit and mukluks in a flash and told the “fashion police” to stuff it.”
Stella, who keeps track of such things, insists the dress was specially lined with freezing weather in mind. I certainly hope that’s true.
“Everyone who took a guitar to Alaska kept it in a plastic bag with a damp sponge to avoid it coming apart,…”
String players I knew in my earlier years used a Dampit, a.k.a. a “limp dick,” for the same purpose. Are those still around? Google will tell you, but I’m going to bed rather than look it up right now.
Steve Bates´s last blog post..The Day After
Michelle’s dress jacket was lined with pashmina cashmere according to my newspaper.
That may have been of some warmth, but I think I’d still be freeeeeeeezing.
Dampit is still going strong, Steve.
I don’t care what it was lined with, it was only kept closed at the neck. My Mother has a couple of pashima cashmere shawls, but as nice as they feel, she still wears a down-fill filled coat when going outside below 40°.