The Temperature Speaks For Itself

 

The coldest temperature that I ever busked in was 37 degrees, and I remember that, in between songs, like if I was talking to someone, I had to keep my hands wrapped around the neck of the guitar. If I let go of it, the next time I fretted a chord or something, I would feel how the neck itself had dropped in temperature and it might have taken a minute or so of playing before the stinging in my fingertips subsided. At 37 degrees, I just relied upon a few simple chords that could be played using the strongest muscles in the hand, like a G major chord, played by wrapping the thumb around for the bottom note and using the third finger for the top note. The pinkie was kind of out of commission at that point.

I used to play at a Kangaroo store in Jacksonville that was across the street from a bank that had a large sign that alternated between time and temperature. I was able to not how every degree that it dropped below 50 became noticeable. As the temperature went from 44 to 43 was when the stinging in the fingertips started, with me having to blow on my hands in between songs and to keep one hand wrapped around the open position frets to keep the neck as warm as possible.

It is 34 now, according to the Bourbon Street webcam. At that temperature, I would be telling my hands to form certain notes and chords, but there wouldn't be enough strength in the fingers for them to obey.

If it were a matter of just sitting at the Lilly Pad with the guitar, wearing gloves and not playing, but rather just making myself visible, I might consider going down there. When it starts raining and I duck under the overhang to wait it out, I often get tipped by people who might make the observation of: I guess you're out of business; that sucks... before handing me a 10 or a 20. But, in a cold weather situation, the tourists are usually hurrying past, trying to get into the warmth of the bar as quickly as possible. It's unlikely that I could draw any of their attentions with the simple 3 chord songs I would be relegated to playing; the ones that are played using the thumb and the ring and first fingers.

Although, I will say that 99 times out of 100, I am rewarded in some way for just going out there. There are the tips that come from people who admire the courage, or desperation, of someone busking on a 43 degree night. "I don't know how you do it..." they might say. And it is also probable, in such situations, that someone who is in the 1% and might have about 500 bucks on them will drop a 50 dollar tip, thinking that that might be about all I stand to make on such a night. On more than one occasion different people have given me like 65 bucks and said: "Get a room, and get out of this cold, or sit in some bar, buying a drink every hour or so until the sun comes up" type of thing... But I would say that, more than 90 times out of 100, I end up thinking: I sure am glad I decided to come out...

But, right now Harold is inside with me, and I think I'll do the Wim Hof breathing method exercises for a half hour and then I might call Lilly. I'm sure the first thing out of her mouth, while skipping the formality of saying "hello" (she has caller ID and almost never say's that, but often continues a conversation from a previous call. The last time I called her, as soon as it connected, she said: "He's really polite; he's a nice guy, really polite; the girls thought so..." which was referring to Jacob after the time that we were busking and Lilly and the girls stopped on their way into the house and chatted for a bit.

During the pandemic lock down, she would answer with: "Did you get the vaccine?" and I would say that I hadn't even left the apartment all week, telling her that I had stocked up on groceries and cat food and was hunkering down. Not even Lilly's worrying mind could envision me catching the big "C19" from Harold.

"You can't be sure, Daniel, maybe cats can spread it without getting sick themselves, and then you would be screwed. It's a horrible death, Daniel; horrible!"

She would then talk about how her and the girls had been bed-ridden with vaccine related symptoms, taking Tylenol and NyQuil, and basically suffering, probably to the same degree as they would have, had they gotten the virus.

It's just astounding how the Phizers and Modernas of the world, that account for something like 70% of the advertising revenue of what people had been conditioned to regard as the "mainstream" media, working in cahoots with the Bill Gate's and other Davos elitists of the world, were able to pull the wool over so many eyes. 

Something like 72 news channels are owned by a handful of people, who were able to create the impression that "everyone, everywhere" was saying the same things; and so that became truth by preponderance. Not aware that they were all following the same marching orders, people would "flip through the channels," thinking: "Oh, look, they're condemning Trump, too! And, so is this channel, and this one. They all are! If I was Trump I would just resign, because, obviously everyone is on to him, just look at all these reports, from Whoopie in the morning, all the way up until Colbert before midnight. "Everyone" can see what a jerk the guy is!"

I know some people are gullible, but, how hard is it to see that the democrats literally accuse "the other side" of doing exactly what they (the democrats) are doing?!
Rachael "If you take the vaccine, you won't get Covid, you can't spread it, etc." Maddow actually said she wasn't going to air Trumps "victory" speech, because she refuses to air "misinformation." Wow...

I guess Don Lemon at least won't shame all of the previously healthy young people who have dropped dead, the world over, in the past couple years; because of some factor that has surfaced in just the past couple of years...hmm 

Funny how those incidents didn't get any media coverage. Even when that Buffalo Bills player collapsed on the field during a game, none of the announcers said anything like: "I wonder if it's one of those vaccine related heart issues that we've heard about..." Oh, my bad; I guess they wouldn't have heard about that; unless they were watching some podcast that they could get themselves fired from their jobs just for watching...
Russell Brand has shown about a 3 minute video of nothing but young athletes collapsing on tennis courts, basketball courts, soccer fields etc. etc. etc.
Oh, but I'm forgetting, Russell was accused of an incident of sexual harassment that allegedly took place like 20 years ago. I guess that means that video was Photoshopped or AI generated...just the type of thing that someone anonymously accused of such a thing would produce. Sometimes I forget.

"Is There Anybody Else Up There?"

I admit that, at first, I was apprehensive. I noticed that the lion's share of people had capitulated to the fear mongers who have a monopoly on the mainstream venues.
Even Catholic people, who would normally have their throats blessed at the start of flu season each year, seemed to have relegated that particular article of faith to voodoo or witchcraft. Some kind of invocation to the Holy Spirit to ward off that year's strain of flu, is all well and good, but "not if my life depends upon it," type of thing.

I was waiting to see if the city would be coming around yelling: "Bring out your dead," pulling tumbrels stacked high with cadavers, before even considering taking a medicine that later was proven to put healthy people under the age of 35 at a greater risk than from the C19 itself. (those statistics come from insurance providers, whose livelihoods depends upon cutting through the hype and the lies and analyzing hard cold facts.

The tumbrels never materialized, and at the same time, I was seeing footage on the local news of the hospital down the street being overrun with C19 patients. On one such day, I had been to the very same emergency room because of a toothache, I think it was.

There was no such crowd of patients. Furthermore, there was a follow up report maybe a week later, ostensibly to illustrate that the situation was still dire. I recognized the people shown as being the same ones from the older broadcast; the guy in the Houston Astros shirt alongside the short pudgy lady with her jeans tucked inside her boots. Yeah, that was them...still in line a week later...

It (the way fear had weakened people's faith) reminds me of the joke where I guy falls over a cliff and is hanging by that little tree branch that cartoon characters always seem to grab on their way down.
He is trying to hang on and is yelling for help: "Is anyone up there? Help!"
Then a voice like thunder cascades down, saying: "This is the Lord, your God. I will save you, but first you must have enough faith to let go of the branch..."

The guy thinks for a second, then yells: "Is there anybody *else* up there?!"

Well, I've managed to stay up all night again. The sun will rise shortly. It's 24 degrees outside with a wind chill that makes it feel like 17. There's still a bunch of stuff I wouldn't mind staying up longer in order to get to...
The highlights from the 2 playoff games that I missed because, in the case of one, I went to the memorial service for Dorise Blackmon, who passed away last November, on a day that I had been thinking about her for some reason...