weather and birthdays
can he really be?
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Yes, it’s really hot in the Chesapeake. Yes, we are gradually accumulating a bit of rain to scrape back towards average (if this year isn’t evidence that using ‘normal’ as the term is a fallacy, I don’t know what is. None of us have any idea what normal implies from here on.) rainfall amount. And yes, we braved the blanket of humidity to walk this morning.
Yesterday’s local health warnings focused on stagnant air while today we moved from a warning early high heat to one on excessive heat. We haven’t gone out since I picked some fresh basil for lunch. We probably will walk the seawall after dinner but maybe not. We are not quite brazen kids anymore, pretending nothing could possible lodge in our lungs or anything else. Thank goodness for water and air conditioning.
Anyone inside the Beltway must wonder why anyone built the nation’s capital in such an unpleasant climate but perceptions were different before the luxury of air conditioning. The nation largely was the Eastern seaboard, extending north and south from what became the city, so climate was hardly their primary priority. The late 18th century nation-builders knew nothing different from high humidity and heat here, though evidence is that the temperatures have risen far higher in the last four decades. Washington certainly is a place those of us seasoned by age feel the oppressive heat and humidity. Then again, the whole northern hemisphere seems to have excessive heat.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stopped in the middle of a sentence yesterday during a press event, apparently telling aides after they wisked him from the microphones that he was lightheaded. Speculation is that perhaps he was dehydrated by the weather. An abnormal pause for a politician of his experience jars anyone watching the replay as he looks decidedly bewildered. McConnell returned to the photo op after several moments, but the jokes he offered could not erase memories of his extended absence from the chamber for several weeks in a rehab center following a serious tumble last spring. At 81, I suspect we see the Kentucky Senator wrestling with questions arising about the length of his tenure as true for a number of senior politicians.
The nation’s Chief Executive also lives here year round so he feels the penetrating conditions. Presidents have the luxury of escaping both the weather and the grit of the capital when they travel to the hills of northern Maryland to Camp David. I have never been there but have traversed the Catocin Mountains numerous times; these are not the Rockies or the Himalayas so I have a hard time believing the relief is dramatic. Camp David might be less stressful than the nation’s capital for the aging presidents of late.
Voters note President Biden’s age compares with McConnell while supporters seemingly give former president Trump a bit more leeway even though he is merely 3 1/2 years younger. Biden is trim and seemingly fit at 80 but known to trip occasionally (something I am quite good at myself) which presents a less than desirable visual for someone asking for another presidential term. Trump is a golfer but eschews other exercise. He is substantially overweight, preferring a diet that most physicians implore patients avoid because it contributes to the leading cause of death for Americans—heart disease. Neither Biden or Trump seems able to avoid stress altogether, for differing reasons.
Perhaps McConnell, Biden, and Trump should all ponder a change of careers, casting aside politix for Rock and Roll. Just yesterday, arguably the world’s greatest single showman Mick Jagger, a paragon of as dissolute a lifestyle as anyone can describe, celebrated his 80th birthday. Put another way, he managed to survive the 61 (yes, SIXTY-ONE) years of touring with untold amounts of questionable substances, fathering 8 children with four women (single wife, however), and literally touring the world with an incredibly high energy performance style that wears one out watching it now, much less over the past several decades. It’s harrowing to think about the stress and strain on Jagger’s body.
A special record a day late for Mick:
Yet, according to British papers, he still implements the lesson his physical education teacher father gave him three quarters of a century ago: he runs eight miles daily. Let’s think about this: if you were a party-hardy person in your mid-twenties, would you have been able to play a multi-hour full-bore musical, strutting your stuff constantly, then go party down with buds (who knows precisely what you would have been consuming if you were Mick?), then run the next day, particularly if you had to fly elsewhere or even think about working on new material?? Almost superhuman, if not death-defying each day in my book. But that is Mick.
During the late 1970s, when I studied in London, Mick and Jerry Hall lived around the corner from me according to the press (remember, the British press is the most aggressive in the world so they know things). I most certainly never came across them even though I walked ever inch of Chelsea in my ecstatic thrill of living there. He obviously did not frequent our local (a.k.a. pub). If Mick was running back then, it was at hours I was in seminar or wearing a hole (literally) in my leather shoe between my residence and libraries. I never even saw him buying shoe dye for his hair, side by side with the Punks, in the stores on King’s Road, a behaviour so pervasive I stopped noticing it.
But, one does have to wonder how a guy can have had this much energy over the decades without wearing down? Perhaps it was the genteel environment of a Sunday morning in Chelsea? Probably not. Having kids between 6 and 52 might have energised him but that might have been enough to send the average 80 year old back to bed. Can substances give you that much help? Seriously?
As my friend Adrienne, a health care professional in Scotland, first suggested to me, it must be a person’s genes. The man must have supernatural genetic tolerance for stimuli while a metabolism creating physical stamina and energy. Perhaps his folks lived to be 107. Maybe they are still around! Certainly genetics play a part in the incredible complexity of our individual life spans.
Maybe it was all an act by a man who actually sleeps 15 hours daily, only appearing to consume the dubious substances his mates ascribed to him. That is a plausible idea if it didn’t seem to counter to the facts. However, facts are not held in high esteem these days as we know.
Perhaps it’s just that Mick only comes to our hot Yank shores for relatively miniscule periods of time. The man lives what appears a more charmed life than we mere mortals. It’s certainly a contrast to see his vitality versus what Senator McConnell showed yesterday, former president Trump illustrates as he pounds the greens at Bedminster, or as Joe Biden climbs stairs on to airplanes. Mick doesn’t have to do a bloody thing for the rest of his life. He must be wealthier than any of these three individuals, after sixty-one years of performing and (again according to the British press) managing some detail the Stones continued rulers of this planet in Rock & Roll’s kingdom.
Ultimately, Mick will come back to mere more mortal status as we all do. That is one imperative about life—it runs its full course at some point. British weather is certainly a bit better than most in the United States and certainly in the Beltway. If he’s in tax exile somewhere in the Med, he may well have other weather challenges such as the Greek fires. We know what the end is but none of us, to include Mick, know when that will happen.
Mick Jagger, like Senator McConnell, President Biden, and former President Trump, continues satisfying his crowd while making others recoil. It’s the nature of stardom of all types these days. All four of them are men who attract great ridicule and great applause.
I must conclude, however, that Mick is the who apparently gets what he needs. FIN