Hot News
I haven't blogged for a number of days, and not entirely coincidentally, it's been hot. Not complaining, mind you. For most of the summer it hasn't been very hot at all, and when it has been, it hasn't been all that humid. Until the last few days—lately it's been the kind of weather that inspires dogs to creep under the porch and loll there, panting, with their dripping tongues stuck out to an alarming length in a long curve. In all but the most literal sense, I've been doing the same thing. I do such work as I have to, and then I just vegetate in the shade. I don't feel like blogging. I just feel blah.
But speaking of shade, I mentioned the other day that I saw a woman going down the street with a big orange umbrella, using it as a parasol. Well, maybe I'm a trend-spotter but there's a serious heat wave going on in Europe, and the BBC was showing various scenes and one jumped out at me—a woman in Lyon using an umbrella the same way. Should I write a trend story about it, using the indispensable phrase "more and more"? "More and more, it seems that strollers on sidewalks from Kennett Square to Lyon have been unfurling their umbrellas on days that are anything but rainy." It's easy. Trend stories are fun because the higher you go in the newspaper business, the less they have to be based on actual trends. You just have to think of yourself as something of an oracle. You meet the type, if you're in the newspaper business. They're in a bar downtown, the bartender casually remarks that people aren't drinking vodka as much as they used to, and four days later it's a trend piece in the Style section of the Times. More and more, people are drinking vodka less and less. No numbers, nothing like that. The news is attributed to "industry watchers." Not me, I don't do that. I have no idea if, more and more, people are carrying umbrellas as parasols. I just know I've seen it twice in a matter of days, and there's something about the sight of a person floating down the sidewalk with an umbrella over her head that makes me feel cheerful and happy, on a hot day.
But speaking of shade, I mentioned the other day that I saw a woman going down the street with a big orange umbrella, using it as a parasol. Well, maybe I'm a trend-spotter but there's a serious heat wave going on in Europe, and the BBC was showing various scenes and one jumped out at me—a woman in Lyon using an umbrella the same way. Should I write a trend story about it, using the indispensable phrase "more and more"? "More and more, it seems that strollers on sidewalks from Kennett Square to Lyon have been unfurling their umbrellas on days that are anything but rainy." It's easy. Trend stories are fun because the higher you go in the newspaper business, the less they have to be based on actual trends. You just have to think of yourself as something of an oracle. You meet the type, if you're in the newspaper business. They're in a bar downtown, the bartender casually remarks that people aren't drinking vodka as much as they used to, and four days later it's a trend piece in the Style section of the Times. More and more, people are drinking vodka less and less. No numbers, nothing like that. The news is attributed to "industry watchers." Not me, I don't do that. I have no idea if, more and more, people are carrying umbrellas as parasols. I just know I've seen it twice in a matter of days, and there's something about the sight of a person floating down the sidewalk with an umbrella over her head that makes me feel cheerful and happy, on a hot day.
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