HELLO! WHEN LABOR Day came around, we told you, the readers of Indignity, that we would be aiming to deliver you a full newsletter five days a week. Aiming! Between lingering Covid effects and the demands of our budget-balancing side gigs, we were not able to come up with a lead item today. Consider this a little extra summer vacation for your Indignity team, while there’s still an official sliver of summer remaining.
Below are the Weather Review and this morning's podcast. Thank you for reading Indignity, and thank you for your patience.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, September 19, 2023
★★★★★ A blue jay looked as big as a magpie in the morning shade among the dangling leaves of the honeylocust tree. The long pants didn't even need to be the lightweight ones anymore. In the brightness of the sun the cars looked dusty while the curb gleamed. A can of milk from the market shelf felt chilled to the touch back in the apartment. Hours flowed by with nothing to impede the daylight. The chatter of people gathering outside carried from somewhere out of view, just far enough that the words were all tone and mood, with no semantic content, till the voices finally resolved themselves into a chorus of "Happy Birthday." A lone wisp of pink cloud drifted overhead.
Your humble commenter is from south texas and that means my relationship with summer is different. I live in the midwest and I now understand that the whole “seasons” things was in fact, based on some real life phenomenon.
September hit and the whole of St. Louis cooled down to a perfect 77. It’s great. Summers here are nice. They are mean in Texas.
My uncle came up to visit and saw a playground and said to me “that’s cruel they way they don’t protect against the sun”. I reminded him that the midwest sun is for growing flowers and warming you up. In Texas it yells at you to get back inside and calls you stupid.
I get why everyone likes baseball now that I’m here. The winter is cold and dark and spring and summer is just a rejoicing.
I don’t particularly *like* the Cardinals (and despite what happened to the Rangers against the Cardinals in the World Series I mostly blame that old Texas Ranger luck than hate this team) and so them being terrible is really just a good opportunity to get $5 tickets presented by someone or other and take the family out.
The kids, of course, don’t pay much attention and are a little startled when a home run is hit and there are fireworks. “I just like the snacks, daddy”. The littlest girl asks the occasional question about the score board. “Why are there so many zeros?”. All the explaining about strikes and innings and balls and outs is something I’ve done before but I dadsplain again and again because I cannot have my children sound sports dumb sometime in the future and well, it makes me excited to see them even slightly interested. Random dads and grandads (presumably) smile at overhearing my explaining -- “yes! the game must be taught!” their smiling eyes (seemingly) say.
One time in July the ladies behind us overheard my explanation of the batting order (home team last) and were thankful for my explanation. I was a bit confused by their gratitude at first because I swore they had talked about their lifelong love of the game. I suppose not saying something like that to strangers is the teaching goal here. Maybe. I don’t know.
I took my kid to an MLS game and I have college hoops season tickets and have been to a bunch of college football games with them. As a dad baseball is the obvious number one Take The Kid sport. While soccer is great she had to stand with me the whole time and the snacks weren’t as fun. “I like baseball better because they have bases” she says. Can’t beat that logic.