Global Warming Conspiracy – Rainy Days and Mondays

By Larry Teren

My brother-in-law – no, not the doctor, but the expert in everything, believes that the plethora of hot days we are experiencing this summer is due to global warming. I ask him if he still believes in global warming when his neighborbood out on the east coast gets two 20 inch snowfalls within a month’s time. He says that it is further proof that the climate is changing. After all, don’t I understand that the global warming effect is causing the polar ice caps to melt? That this causes an atmospheric imbalance so that now we should experience more precipitation during the winter?

Personally, I believe in trends and streaks that effect climate change. Global warming is just one of them. But, ask me in another fifty years what I think then. Hopefully, I won’t have to pull denture teeth out of a glass of water to sound coherent.

I recall lots of snow as a kid but I was closer to the ground in those days. Maybe it also has to do with lousy snow removal planning forty years ago. I’d like to think that most baby boomers think like me and that what goes around comes around. In mid January, when it is five below for a couple of days, we’ll all forget the two or three days we were told to stay indoors in July when the thermometer hit 100.

Look, I’m all for global warming. I’d prefer just three or four months of getting no colder than thirty-five degrees. Maybe some of those snow birds who flocked to Arizona and other parts of the sun belt will want to move back here. It will bring the real estate prices back up to where I’m breaking even again. And I can live without the snow and drivers who are afraid to go more than 20 miles an hour on the open road. Hey, stay home, okay?

So, last week on Monday the sky was overcast and it rained just enough to need an umbrella.
You know, it’s tough to get depressed when it is so sunny and humid out. We need a miserable weather day to put things in perspective about the human condition. Yes, rain makes one sober and pensive. Okay, wet, too.

Paul Williams put it so precisely in his 1971 song, “Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down”. The Carpenters turned it into a major hit.

Earlier back in 1966, John Phillips penned and also performed with The Mamas and Papas a Monday themed song (“Monday, Monday”) that can be played while staring outside as the rain falls. Baby boomers remember these words, “but whenever Monday comes, you can find me crying all the time.”

IN 1969, Hal David and Burt Bacharach wrote a rain song that could be sung any day of the week, “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” However, here the muse tells us not to fret about the rain, not to let it get us down.

Going back a couple of generations earlier, the grandaddy of rain songs was written by Arthur Freed in 1929. “I’m Singng in the Rain”, of course, is a celebratory tune of a man in love who doesn’t let the rain dampen his spirits.

But my favorite rain song of all time is Allan Sherman’s 1963 ode to summer campers, “Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda” in which he sang, “wait a minute, it’s stopped hailing….. mudda, fadda, kindly disregard this letter.”

By the way, the weather forecast predicts sunny and 80s for Monday. That is, of course, unless you live in Alaska or on polar ice caps.

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