Al's Morning Meeting reader Brian Spadora,
a reporter at the Herald News in West Paterson, N.J., sent me a great tip and story idea. He writes:
My colleague, Suzanne Travers, wrote a story for today's paper that provides a great, original take on the heat wave.
Suzanne spoke to
Muslim and Orthodox Jewish women about how they cope with the heat
while adhering to the rules of their religions.
I am crazy about this story idea. The story says:
Shunie
Perlmutter thought nothing of how she and her six children were dressed
this week until she took them shopping at Target. There she noticed
people giving them looks.
As
people elsewhere peeled off layers to cope with record-setting
temperatures, Perlmutter and her three oldest daughters were dressed as
usual -- in ankle-length skirts and long-sleeved shirts as Orthodox Jewish tradition requires.
"I
was thinking, 'People must think we're crazy," Perlmutter said
Wednesday. "They must think 'why in the world is she dressing her
children like this -- doesn't she know it's 100 degrees?'"
Perlmutter, who lives in Clifton,
also continued to wear her wig in this week's scorching summer heat.
She lives by the strict Orthodox dress code that calls on married women
to cover their hair and older girls and women to keep their elbows,
knees and collarbones covered.
Elsewhere in Passaic County
on Wednesday, men walked around bare-chested with T-shirts slung over
their shoulders. Women wore short-shorts and pulled shirts up to expose
their bellies.
But
for every person who stripped down to get cool, there was someone else
who for work, or safety, religious or cultural reasons, wore pants or a
hat, boots or long sleeves -- effectively bundled up despite the
intense heat. Some cursed their clothes, while some embraced them.
"I think in the summer that people are hot no matter what," Perlmutter said.
For
her, the Orthodox way of dressing prizes female modesty as a woman's
"crown of glory," a way for girls to be valued as people and not just
for external beauty, Perlmutter said. Such an approach is not to be
discarded just because the mercury rises.
"The
internal dictates the external," she said. "If we have our approach to
life coupled with a strong amount of common sense, then we manage to
cope with the weather."
In
the oppressive heat, Perlmutter's family drank plenty of fluids and
cooled off with a dip in the backyard pool of a neighbor friend, where
the boys and girls took turns in separate swim sessions. In the privacy
of a same-sex environment, she wore a bathing suit and hat.
But
the bottom line: "It's so irrelevant that it's 100 degrees outside
because you're completely fortified with your life philosophy,"
Perlmutter said.
In her air-conditioned store, Nebal Nasser, who works at the Islamic Fashions Center on Gould Avenue in Paterson,
wore a long plaid skirt that reached her ankles, a long-sleeved knit
sweater, and a white headscarf closed with a brooch beneath her chin.
Observant
Muslim women are meant to show only their faces and hands in public,
and in the company of all men except for close relatives, she said, but
the long clothing she wears makes her feel cooler anyway.
"Sometimes
when you cover and go outside, you sweat right away," she said. "Comes
a little bit of air, right away you feel cool. Sun on the skin dries it
out, you feel hot."
Like
Orthodox Jewish women, Muslim women have a looser dress code at home
and when they are in the presence of only other women, Nasser said.
Here are some more resources you might find useful as you report this story in your area:
Sweatiquette
This weekend I was stuck on airport trams with sweaty, smelly folks, while I am sure I was smelling like a rose. The New York Daily News offers "sweatiquette tips" for what you should do in the following situations:
- You're confronted
with a sweaty friend who wants to give you a bear hug after he's been
percolating on a subway platform for 20 minutes. A normal greeting
suddenly turns supremely awkward as you see the drops glistening on his
brow and dripping down his neck. Suddenly, fear grips you, as you are
forced to encounter the beast in front of you. There is no way out.
- You'd like to
curtail the moisture but are unsure what level of personal sweat
management is OK. Fanning oneself? Fully mopping the brow with a bar
napkin?
- You're the yucky one and dripping wet.
- You drip sweat on someone.
Hot Playgrounds
The Consumer Product Safety Commission warns that, in hot weather, little kids can be burned in seconds when they sit on hot metal playground slides.
CPSC knows of
incidents in which children suffered second and third degree burns to
their hands, legs, and buttocks when they sat on metal stairs, decks,
or slides. Young children are most at risk because, unlike older
children who react quickly by pulling away their hands or by getting
off a hot surface, very young children may remain in place when they
contact a hot surface.
WFMY-TV in Greensboro, N.C., took a thermometer to a playground and found slides and swings scorching hot in the summertime.
A plastic slide was 113 degrees and a swing was 95 degrees, way too hot for little kids to touch. Other stations found 110-degree monkey bars and 104-degree heat on a plastic slide. WBBH-TV in Fort Myers, Fla., found similar results.
Ceiling Fans
The South Bend (Ind.) Tribune reports:
Fans
can reduce energy bills significantly, as much as 40 percent in the summer and
10 percent in the winter, according to the American Lighting Association. The
cost to run a fan is usually estimated at pennies per day, or only as
much energy as a 100-watt light bulb. Fans can lower a room temperature
as much as 7 degrees in the summer.
The Controversial V-Chip Campaign
For the next year and a half, you will be seeing and hearing
$300-million worth of ads promoting the use of the V-Chip. This is the National Association of Broadcasters'
attempt to stave off further regulation and tightening of obscenity rules. The V-chip has been around for years, but
hardly anybody uses it. NAB wants parents to take more
responsibility for controlling what kids watch rather than rely on the Federal Communications Commission or
Congress to tighten content rules.
See the new ads here. Here is a second ad.
The Ad Council is managing the campaign which is funded by a slate of media players. The Ad Council says:
The campaign,
entitled Media Management, was produced in partnership with the Motion
Picture Association of America (MPAA), the National Cable &
Telecommunications Association (NCTA) representing cable programmers
and operators, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the
Consumer Electronics Association (CEA); television broadcast networks,
including ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX; and direct-to-home satellite providers
DirecTV and Echostar.
The Parents Television Council is blasting the ads as being a publicity stunt. The council says:
The
entertainment industry unveiled a publicity campaign designed to
absolve itself of all responsibility for the raw sewage it pumps into America's living rooms night after night.
The Ad Council reports:
According to a Kaiser Generation M study [PDF],
53 percent of 8- [to] 18-year-olds say their families have no rules about TV
watching. In addition, of the remaining 46 percent who say their families do
have rules, the vast majority (80 percent) say these rules are enforced only
some of the time, a little of the time, or never. Despite their general
lack of awareness about blocking technologies, many parents are open to
ideas that promise more control, and agree that these technologies can
be an effective tool.
C/Net says that a 2004 study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 15 percent of parents have ever used the V-Chip. The Ad Council put the usage figures even lower -- at 8 percent.
I
wonder what you would find if you went to an electronics store and
asked TV shoppers if they intend to enable the chip? What does it
filter out, exactly?
While broadcasters
would like for parents to take more responsibility for what kids watch,
others want to force cable companies to offer a la carte menus or fall
within the same decency standards as over-the-air stations.
See this story, originally from Advertising Age, which reports:
U.S.
Reps. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., and Tom Osborne, R-Neb., proposed the
legislation today, called the Family Choice Act, which would require
cable providers to either adopt broadcast TV's indecency standards from
6 a.m. to 10 p.m., offer an a la carte programming option [in which]
subscribers wouldn't have to pay for channels they don't want, or allow
subscribers a "family tier," which wouldn't contain
programming unsuitable for kids between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. The
family tier would be limited to programs not rated TV-Mature or TV-14.
ZDNet reports on the controversy over the V-Chip:
"The
truth of the V-chip, aside from all the rhetoric, is that for the
V-Chip to work, first and foremost it must rely on the ratings system.
If the ratings system doesn't work, then the V-Chip doesn't work,"
[Parents Television Council President Brent] Bozell told CNET News.com.
The inaccuracy of the ratings system is all the more reason for parents
to decide which specific channels they want to order, he said.
The Family Choice Act
of 2006, co-sponsored by Reps. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., and Tom Osborne,
R-Neb., could provide that choice if passed. The bill requires cable
and satellite providers to choose one of three options: Adhere to the
same Federal Communications Commission indecency standards as
broadcasters; allow cable and satellite subscribers to opt out of
certain channels and receive a refund; or offer a tier of programming
that includes expanded basic service minus channels carrying TV-14 or
TV-MA programming between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. News programs and live sporting events would be exempt.
Here are some more resources for you as you pursue this story:
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas,
edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites,
as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes
directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be
provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends
upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors
and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
