International thaw
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 39
WEATHER REVIEWS
Montreal to New York City, March 2, 2025
★★★★★ THE NUMBER ON the weather app was unbelievable and terrifying in its own right but two degrees better than what the forecast for the hour had been. With the curtain drawn back, the hotel window was fortified against even that kind of cold. Down below the sidewalk opposite was the color of concrete, but with contact lenses in, the eye could make out that it was still mostly packed snow and traction grit. The sun sent the long shadows of parking-space poles and the infrequent pedestrians stretching up the block, and it projected a whole array of unreadable glyph-text from a tower of windows back onto an empty wall, rows and columns of shapes in light that seemed to struggle toward individual meaning. It also picked the raised words MONTREAL / ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION / A.D. MCMIV out of the shadows of the relief carving on the lower facade out of which the glassed tower rose. A while later the temperature on the app had risen to 0 degrees Fahrenheit and the light had swung out into the middle of the street, where the way looked clear enough even for the little rented Corolla with its Florida plates. From the breakfast table on the hotel's mezzanine level, one of the blobs of illusory text was almost legible as a 馬 and another was approaching 門. The longjohns had stayed in the suitcase, in realistic planning for what would really only be a jaunt of a few tens of yards down the alley to the elevator to the underground garage. Up top were a heavy long-sleeved shirt, chamois shirt, hoodie, and parka. Darts of frigid air shot through gaps in the button fly of the jeans right outside the lobby door but the greater cold couldn't get through the denim itself before the walk was over. Down in the garage it was merely wintry, mild enough to shuck the hoodie for greater mobility, and for the Toyota to start uncomplainingly on the first try. Its front-wheel drive didn't slip at all going into or out of the snowy hotel loading zone, and then it was off. Plumes of steam from the power plant plunged down into the roadway and the passenger window came away covered in needle patterns of frost. Immense cloud shadows lay on the ice of the St. Lawrence. The looming plow banks had the shape and character of the smaller Jersey barriers embedded somewhere inside them. The sun and rebounding sun off the snow overwhelmed the illumination of the navigation screen. As the roadway ran out between the open fields snow wraiths blew over the pavement. Drifts sculpted into strange curves by the wind alternated with those cut by the straight edge of the plow, the latter showing the history of the winter in stratigraphic layers. Phantom shapes of police cars kept catching the eye in the gray and shadowy snow-cuts on the medians. By the long backup at the border crossing, the temperature on the dashboard readout had reached double digits. Icicles hung down from the tailpipes of the surrounding idled cars. The man in the booth slid his window open no wider than necessary to reach for the passports. Then the Corolla was moving again, with a dark American tree fringe pressing close in place of the bare fields of Quebec. Tan grasses stood up in clouds of overlaid individual stalks against the blank background. The snow sloped gently away, gray with road pollution, then just as gently rose clean and bright on the far side of the dip. Crows clustered on the roadside, a few lifting off a short way into the previously near-birdless air. A long ridge rose into view, showing white where its evergreen covering grew sparse. Wind gave the car a sudden shove. A real state trooper materialized, pulled out, drove along at the speed limit for a while, then pulled into the next median break, throwing up a cloud of salt and grime from the shoulder on the way out. A bright green snowmobile with a rider dressed to match climbed the median and crossed the near-empty highway, with a yellow one following behind, the pair gleaming like beetles. By this latitude the top of the snow had the silvery sheen of an ice crust, rather than the matte dusting of a fresh fall. Flattened oval clouds with rippled parts floated slightly tilted on the blue. A vein of a different, luminous blue, closer to turquoise, ran along one of them. Four other clouds of diminishing size were stacked like pancakes for a moment, then crumbled into each other. Thick icefalls, tinted yet another pale blue, a glacier blue, covered the rocks. Somewhere around Mile 75 on the Northway the light lost its last boreal strangeness and the temperature reading hit 20 and kept on going. Lake George was all covered in white, and the air in town was unpleasantly cold for fumbling with dollar bills at a bum parking payment terminal. The Hudson River, skinny and quickly spanned, was choppy and liquid between its frozen fringes. Tree shadows flickered on the road, and the ice in an overpass drainpipe glowed like a lantern. By Mile 16 there were patches of bare grass on the median, and almost immediately after it was the snow that was in patches, on a ground of grass. In the Catskills the light was skimming the contours of the trees and rocks and grass, a landscape of texture. Beds of reeds were luminous and dead trees looked like ivory. At the rest stop, the southbound travelers still had snow boots on. A cold draft clawed its way up under the loose parka at the gas pumps. Around Poughkeepsie the low sun was strobing through the trees, flooding the right eye with blank orange bursts. Then the road sank into shadow, while the mountains stood ruddy ahead. The highway rose to briefly touch the sun again. The crude false greenery of a cell tower thrust up among the rose-lit bare branches. The land to the west flattened some and the sun reappeared, a disc shining through the dense fringe of trees on a ridgetop. A creek down in the dusk-sunk woods caught the lingering brightness from overhead. The rim of the sky was a delicate lilac over the hideous fabric of New Jersey and then the sharp columns of Manhattan popped into view in the distance, tiny and straight, the colors of the western sky gathered in their facets. Ugly glass boxes nearby reflected burnished bronze against the darkening east. A crescent moon shone over the Hudson, the river now broad enough for the George Washington Bridge. Word from the passenger seat was that the dark part of the lunar disc was visible. The dash thermometer said it was 33 degrees in the full city night.
Also Seen on the Highway
ANDY ROONEY 2.0
A BIT OF traffic was developing on the Adirondack Northway—just enough to raise the possibility of someone stepping on the brakes because someone else stepped on the brakes—when I overtook a white sedan in the next lane. The driver's window was down, despite the bitter cold, and at the wheel was a young woman with heavy, contour-intensive social-media-style makeup on her face. To the left of the wheel was the video image of the same woman, on the screen of her big phone, mounted above the dash, where she could keep looking at it, instead of looking at the road.
I know this is a whole common format for videos, people talking into the camera from the seats of their cars, but I don't like watching videos of people talking to me, so I mostly only ever saw the thumbnails, and for my own sake I had chosen to believe that all these people were either recording these videos while parked or that they were filming from the passenger seat and the camera was mirror-flipping the seat belt. Obviously this person believed something else, and she was acting on her beliefs, at full highway speed.
When you're on the road and you realize another driver is drunk or drowsy—losing speed, weaving, drifting, whatever—you have to figure out what to do: stay back and have nothing to do with them and hope they don't crash in front of you, or risk going closer to get past them and get away. I was ahead of the selfie-driver for the moment, but not clear of her, and the traffic was too thick to make a decisive escape. The white sedan moved over and started driving behind me.
Maybe she wasn't really filming? I kept a fretful eye on the mirror. The white sedan slipped sideways, from its right to left. The driver's-side wheels crossed the yellow line, hit the rumble strip, and rumbled along there for a while before swerving back over. There was a car in front of me, driving like a normal car, and there were cars to my right. I couldn't get loose.
Through the windshield of the car ahead of me, I saw the brake lights of the car further ahead. Then came the brake lights right in front. I stepped on my own brake—half looking at the cars ahead, and half looking, alarmed, in the rearview. The selfie sedan didn't seem to be slowing down much. I did what I do when I have doubts about the car behind and lifted my brake foot for a second, then put it down again, so the brake light would flash. The selfie car got bigger in the mirror. I flashed the brake light once more and the car finally stopped closing the gap.
The traffic stabilized and picked up speed again. The white sedan swung over into an opening on the right, sped up with the aggrieved manner of someone who has just noticed there are other people on the highway and everywhere else and doesn't like it, and passed out of view. This country is not going to make it.
SIDE PIECES DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
For Defector, I wrote about how everyone in a position of authority is responding to Donald Trump and Elon Musk destroying the federal government the same way the police responded to the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre:
Now here's the United States government. Everybody knows what's going on in there, even though nobody can know how bad it really is. The people inside have sounded the alarm and called in the emergency. They're telling the people outside as much as they can see of what's happening, whichever piece of the devastation is in front of their eyes. People are trying to gather on the scene.
And the authorities, the people hired and paid to respond—what are they doing? Some of them are right up beside the destruction, some of them are hovering out on the edges. Some of them are executing what they think is the protocol for this type of situation even though it's obvious to their own eyes and ears that the protocol and the situation are a mismatch. Some are waiting to get word from the chain of command. Someone somewhere is looking for the right tools, the appropriate key.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast.
Tom Scocca
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
GOT SOMETHING YOU need to justify to yourself, or to the world at large? Other columnists are here to judge you, but The Sophist is here to tell you why you’re right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Balanced Meals with Recipes: Food Values, Drying and Cold Pack Canning Menus, with and Without Meat, Box Luncheons, by Members of the Lake View Woman's Club, Chicago, Illinois, published in 1917, and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
POTTED HAM
Nice scraps from a boiled or baked ham; there must be no hard pieces. Chop all very fine, first through medium knife of grinder, then through the finest. Rub to a paste, and to each cupful add one-quarter teaspoon dry mustard and a few grains of cayenne. If very dry, add melted butter or ham fat. Press tightly into small earthen or porcelain lined cups, set cups in pan of hot water, cover with a thin layer of melted fat, then cover tightly, put in oven and bake one hour. Allow to get cold, then cover tops with paper. Use for sandwiches or sliced thin. This will keep well in a cool, dry place. Tongue or fish may be prepared the same way.
—Mrs. S. D. Snow.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
