Tuesday, dreary Tuesday

The sky is gray and groaning a pissy rain today as I walk along ripped-up Battery Place toward Amish Market to pick up some lunch fixings. Amid the confusion of jackhammers, dump trucks and rerouted traffic, I spot a female cop bawling out a helmeted and visibly embarrassed construction worker standing by his rig.

“Did ya see my vest, or what? I’m wearin’ a lime-green vest, you’re comin’ right at me, and still ya don’t see me…”

On the way home I stop at the Starbuck’s on Broad. Business is brisk; a line of office workers in trench coats extends almost to the door. Scattered about the place, IT wizards bask in the glow of their laptop screens. The tight-faced woman, clad in her usual camouflage bandana and camouflage jumpsuit, sits at her spot overlooking Beaver Street, pages of The New York Times spread out on the table like blueprints.

I order a Sumatra Grande and ask the young, black server to leave some room for milk. On the sound system Dean Martin sings, “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head.” A minute later another server turns from the coffee maker, paper cup in hand, and calls out, “Grande with room…Grande with room!”

Back at my home office, business remains frustratingly inconsistent. On the whole, January wasn’t a bad month; one more job would have made the difference. But right now it’s deader than a month-old guitar string: no work, no phone calls, empty inboxes; nothing but the ever-maddening whine of garbage trucks crushing debris from the ongoing building renovation across Exchange Place.

It could be worse. I could be James Frey. I know, I know. I gave him a rhetorical bashing myself in my post, “Truth and consequences.” But I thought Oprah was a tad over the top in the way she handled him during her interview last Thursday. Her dramatics may have been the damage control she needed to save the Oprah brand. I just hope someone checks in on Frey to see that he hasn’t relapsed.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the advance word on tonight’s State of the Union address is that, in addition to Iraq and the war on terror, “health care, energy, competitiveness and controlled government spending” are all on President Bush’s agenda. Sounds like a State of the Union not nearly as radical as last year's. And, as usual, not a peep about climate change, the bane of most Republicans.

At least Democrats are beginning to catch on. Former President Bill Clinton, in comments to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last Saturday, said, “I worry about climate change. It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible."

The Republican Party’s continued refusal to 1) acknowledge that climate change is real and 2) propose initiatives to address the phenomenon, will only add to their problems as the 2006 elections approach. Especially if we get hit with another Katrina-like hurricane this summer. Or widespread drought. And more freaky weather that's fast becoming the norm. Virtually every independent scientific organization studying the issue says we've got a problem, largely of our doing, that requires urgent attention.

Climate change is like the cop in the lime-green vest, standing in the middle of the road. And still Republicans don't see it.