Enter a city or US Zip  
Washington DC's Weather

VOL 3. NO. 25 Monday, July 2 - Sunday, July 8, 2001
AFRICA
AGAINST THE GRAIN
BUSINESS/NETWORKING
CARIBBEAN CONNECTION
CONSCIOUSLY SPEAKING
FOR THE FAMILY
GALLERIES/MUSEUMS
GET YOUR LAUGH ON
GO GO GROOVES
HEALTH/LIVING WHOLE
HIP HOP/R&B
JAZZ/CLASSICAL
JUST CLUBBING
MORE MUSIC
PRAISE & WORSHIP
SOULFUL CUISINE
SPORTING ACTION
STAGE
THE WORD
SIGN UP NOW! FREE Metro Connection email newsletter.

AGAINST THE GRAIN
MUDDA NATURE SHE VEX
Damn It's Hot...
By C.D. ELLISON
Speaking of summer days spent here in the District, when the wind blows it doesn't actually... blow. Wind is absorbed by the muggy absolutes of a Capitol city built on a swampy marsh. Wind blowing is or those "summer breezes" are, we assume, cool, environmentally random melodic breaks temporarily freezing the sweat on the brow. When engaged in customary competitive acts of brutal physical confrontation on heat darkened, rock crispy asphalt courts, you once could count on finding the nearest pocket of Polar-induced oxygen hidden between gouging slurps of Gatorade and pampering face wipes from the forearm. Obviously - these days - relief from the heat is the foregone conclusion of shifting body weight from the Sun's rays. Instead, one must step further away in a desperate Argonautonian quest for centralized air.

Fans don't work - why they are even made, packaged, marketed, distributed and sold is an enduring question contributing to the complex meaning of humanity. Fans merely fan and spread what they are built to eliminate, doing nothing more than blowing heated air, thereby creating more heat, which in turn instigates stifling indoor air burns. Bump the fans, kid. The worst move is a fan in a stuffy ghetto bedroom - or, as in my case, growing up with old-headed, Virginia-bred traditionalists who didn't believe in the wonders of modern air conditioning and worshipped fans like eight tracks.

Indisputable fact: it's hot. A fireball bursting into flame kind of hot that few thought could boil the bloodstreams of countless millions unless they were stranded in some nameless Nevada desert. Our self-described pious polemics on Pennsylvania Avenue have spun it as "climate change," as means to a cooler-headed end. When blasted home and abroad for unapologetic opposition to international "global warming" treaties and sky-is-exploding predictions of a coming Microwave Age, White House officials now rally to calm fears that actively find ways to alleviate unbearable throat-choking heat. "Climate change" carefully strokes the collective American sweat, dismissing stank hot afternoons as a result of somewhat normal fluctuations in Fahrenheit. But, when you were growing up, do you recall anything like a "code red" warning? Entire days when city residents could bum free rides on mass transit? Who would've thunk it? A world of "Code Red," Ozone Depletion Advisories, hazy early mornings with a heat index and... bottled water? It's not so much the matter of a Kyoto Accord filled with risky economic scenarios breaking the American financial back - it's really a matter of a global effort at least taking place or the collective acknowledgement of the problem after years of denial, god-playing and neglect.

Something's not cool. And Mother Nature's ire is in full view of a Weather Channel exclusive: recent storms have been frequent, fierce and furious. Recollections of calmer skies and cooler breezes pass further into memory with every flood, tornado, brush fire and hurricane ripping across the globe in a Biblical tempest.

I miss those innocently bright commercial-like mid-summer days amid cool, breezy patches of grass flowing in designated fashion past perfectly separated row homes laid in middle class grasp. There were always the overtones of happiness. Little girls making simple games of double-dutch and hopscotch on cracked sidewalks while little boys favored scratching knees and busting bones in strenuous exercises of street football. I grew up in an era that did not truly... exist, since it seemed more like transition - between Reagan's first term and - damn...yeah - another term of Reagan.

Neither amity nor animosity persisted, until street became a culture just a pin drop in limbo somewhere before we stopped in Dante's Inferno. It was a page turning after my elder's chapter that noted another time; another way of thinking, another life; another totally different paradigm where, at least, "Code Red" meant a fire alarm went off...

So they say. Another time - in the most sentimental spruce - and another peace. When you could open the doors unlocked, wait for the breeze to pop in and sleep undisturbed without fear of humidity grown monster mosquitoes hitching rides on freighters across the Seven Seas.

C.D. Ellison is Contributing Writer to Metro Connection. He can be reached at againstthegrain@metroconnection.info.


Welcome Calendar Connection What's Up?/Story Ideas/Events Classified Ads Best Black Web Sites Business Services Including our Ujamaa Black Business Directory Our Print Edition Our Advertising Media Kit Contact Us/Feedback Form