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Local View: Grin and brisk it to survive another Minnesota winter |
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From the column: "We humans do a good job of adapting to climate — especially teenagers who insist on wearing flip-flops without socks in the dead of winter. And, alas, for us, winter is on its way — again."
By John Freivalds
Published 8/16/24
Duluth News Tribune
“Let’s get some lunch. I know a place nearby,” my boss said to the three shivering Jamaican visitors. They shuddered, as it was 10 degrees outside the Grain Exchange building with cold blowing snow.
They had come to Minneapolis seeking investment for a soybean factory. People think of Jamaica as a tropical paradise, but it’s poor. Nonetheless, the Jamaicans wondered how anyone could stand to live and prosper in this cold, frigid place. They came wearing lightweight suits while my boss led them to the restaurant wearing a mismatched suit, a wooly hat, a wool overcoat, fur-lined gloves, and galoshes. Fashion be damned. And my boss, a real cold-weather chauvinist, would only admit that the weather was “brisk.”
We live in an age where people listen to too many weather forecasts and channels from other places and wonder how people elsewhere survive, whether it’s Florida hurricanes, Saudi dust storms, Bangladesh floods, Kansas tornadoes, Hawaiian volcanoes, California wildfires, or Dakota blizzards. We humans do a good job of adapting to climate — especially teenagers who insist on wearing flip-flops without socks in the dead of winter.
And, alas, for us, winter is on its way — again.
I grew up in steamy Washington, D.C., where it was so humid you felt you could cut the thick air with a knife. It’s so hot from May to September there that the British Foreign Service once regarded it as a “hardship post.”
Equally dire is when you read reports about the crushing 125-degree heat in the Middle East. I lived in the Iranian desert one summer and initially wondered why the men wore long white robes. Turns out, the robes are like air conditioners. The body temperature is 98.6 and the outside temperature is 125, helping the body cool by keeping the outside air out. The white fabric reflects sunlight, helping to reduce heat absorption and allows air to circulate around the body. The robes are worn throughout the Middle East to protect the wearers from the heat and to allow them to stay modest.
In addition, not everyone can afford air conditioning, so a lot of houses are “built-dug“ underground. And with ground temperatures at 190, it is impossible to stand the heat, so they go underground. And, yes, I did once fry an egg on a sidewalk. Since you asked, I like them over easy.
But all-time disregard for weather must belong to the Yahgans, who were “discovered” by Magellan in 1520. They lived at the frosty tip of South America; remnants of their civilization remain. They wore little clothing and kept warm by building bonfires, giving that part of Argentina the name of Tierra del Fuego: “land of fires.” They used boulders and forts to shield themselves from the elements and covered their bodies with animal grease. “They were renowned for their complete indifference to the cold weather,” Wikipedia reports . “Although they had fires and small domed shelters, they routinely went about completely naked, and the women swam in cold waters hunting for shellfish.”
A Martian landing in Minnesota would have to say we are doing the same thing the Yahgans did. I mean, where else would people go ice fishing or walk around in snowshoes and be fascinated by wind-chill readings?
Then we have these people who go to open-air football games and sit in subzero weather, some shirtless, for three hours while guzzling cold beer.
To dissuade all the bad talk about Minnesota winters (started by Mark Twain), St. Paul invented the winter carnival in the late 1800s. Reddit summed it up this way: “Winters in Minnesota are absolutely brutal and long. If you are not able to come to terms with that and adapt, you will not be a happy person.”
John Freivalds of Wayzata, Minnesota, is the author of six books, is the honorary consul of Latvia in Minnesota, and is a regular contributor to the News Tribune Opinion page. His website is jfamarkets.com.