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Joey apparently enjoyed a hot, steamy holiday season under the warm sun here in the Northeast.
BROCKLESBY
THE SUITE LIFE
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Where is the real nexus of evil here at the Cross? ... Has Satan ever done anything quite as dastardly as blanket Worcester in snow?
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COMMENTS ON THE PASSING PARADE
It’s Cold
By Michael J. Ballway
CRUSADER FEATURES COLUMNIST
‘I
t's cold," he said, shivering under a dark, cloudy sky over the bleached asphalt fronting Kimball Hall. "Cold, chilly, and frigid. I don't believe it." He looked down and rubbed his gloved hands, dancing a quiet jig to ward off Old Man Winter. A plague of frosty air and strange, solid-state water have descended upon our dear Alma Mater, the equal of the locusts and frogs that Egypt faced in times Biblical. What are we to make of these unwelcome intrusions into life on the Hill? "Snowballs," says popular opinion, but even a thorough afternoon's fun of throwing crystallized H2O at men and women for others hardly brings this reporter closer to the true reason for these blights upon our skies, thermometers and roadways. "It's cold," said amateur meteorologist Joey Brocklesby '03, echoing the cry of millions (well, thousands) in the past two weeks. "And I have no idea where all this cold is coming from. What's the deal with this snow stuff? Man, this is weird. Argh, it's cold!" Joey apparently enjoyed a hot, steamy holiday season under the warm sun here in the Northeast, much like the rest of the student body. Your frostbitten reporter, unhappily shoveling snow in the faraway land of Ohio, missed out on the heat-wave that seems to have ended when classes began on Jan. 15. Since that day, New Englanders like Joey have been harping on and on about how cold it is, how unseasonably cold, how bone-chillingly, unbearably, insufferably cold here in Worcester. But for that late-December, early-January balminess that Joey so enjoyed in his native upper Vermont! But for the temperate airs of New Year's in Boston, the veritable steam cooker that was Christmas in Jersey City! They are gone now, to hear our fellow Crusaders complain, those days of Santa-themed swimsuits and of tank tops at the Times Square ball-dropping. All of a sudden winter has taken on a cold demeanor, and Holy Cross is not adjusting well to the change. Trans-Appalachian readers may shake their heads in puzzlement, wondering what strange mental infirmity has gripped the writer of this column. Yes, Cleveland, you saw temperatures in the teens. Yes, Chicago, those gusts off Lake Michigan numbed the natives just as much as visitors from Tampa. Yes, Buffalo, you returned home one night to find that your street had been replaced by a snowdrift dotted with chimneytops. But listen closely to your compatriots from White Plains, Woonsocket, Wellesley, or Winooski. Each day they gaze upward in wonderment at the white flakes descending, or pile parkas upon sweaters and shiver in 35° as they make the long hike from Healy to Hogan. "It's cold," said Joey, when asked why he has stayed inside as much as possible this semester. Years of Burlington-area rec-league hockey, skating dangerously close to La Froide Province of Québec, have apparently not prepared him for the spectacle of snow or the feeling of chilly weather. Initially, your affable columnist was ready to attribute Joey's -- and the rest of the school's -- odd reactions to some freak meteorological quirk or even journalistic error on the part of his research. But this ridiculous charade has been going on for as long as Comments on the Passing Parade has been here to observe it. Every year, following reports of whiteouts on Rte. 128 and low mercury as far south as Baltimore, this puzzled reporter returns to his home on the Hill to find people complaining about how bad the weather is all of a sudden. What's going on here? A cynical reporter might claim that there was no Yankee heat wave after all, and that Holy Cross students are simply doing what Holy Cross students do best -- complain -- even though they have, indeed, faced Worcesteresque weather all their lives (including our four weeks' furlough following finals). This cannot be the answer, though. The year is young, our future is bright, and half of the Black Rails on Kimball Quad were removed. What reason do Holy Cross students have to complain? No, there must be a legitimate complaint here. Someone has conspired heinously to pull this annual bait-and-switch on an unsuspecting Crusader student body. A true search for these perpetrators would be epic and time-consuming, far out of the reach of a simple column such as this one. But here at The Crusader we are quite willing to suggest a few possible culprits, or as we journalists like to call it, "make a few unsubstantiated claims in order to grab the reader's attention with a minimum amount of research and thinking on the part of the writer." Where is the real nexus of evil here at the Cross? Some would say former exorcism site Fenwick 5, but really, has Satan ever done anything quite as dastardly as blanket Worcester in snow? The connection with cold air makes Canada another likely suspect, and of course the Harvard Pep Band still carries our enmity. Presumably Allan H. "Bud" Selig has his hands full trying to wreck baseball, but you never know. My money's on the Lower Kimball "deli" line, the understocked counter that claims it can satisfy its customers with only a handful of lunchmeats. Is there no more positive force in the world, no more welcome haven in a hectic work day, than the high-quality downtown delicatessen? Is there no more un-deli-like place, no establishment less inviting to the hungry businessman, than Lower Kimball's sandwich line? What can be more evil than the corruption of a true American classic? Corned beef and pastrami are to Kimball as foreign as polar bear liver and yak's milk. Even Joey, so recently duped by Lower's sinister control of Massachusetts weather, sees through the brainwashing and recalls, each noon, the hot, heaping roast beef sandwiches he enjoys at home, comparing them unfavorably to the skimpy offerings here on campus, noting his distaste with a simple complaint: "It's cold." This article appeared in the 25 January 2002 edition of The Crusader, on pages 11 (front page of Features section) and 12. The editors changed the headline to "Cold Comfort, for Change: Holy Cross Hunkers Down," with the inside head of "Worcester Weather Wakens." |