I am still at least a bit intrigued by some of the European posters’ declaring that MMGW is not at all questioned there and expressing their surprise that it is in the U.S.
One thing I wonder about, very unscientifically, is that climatic zones are very different in Europe. In Europe, climatic zones essentially run from west to east until one gets well into Russia. In North America, north of the Rio Grande, at least, they run essentially south to north, with some upturn on both coasts, more on the west than the east.
That leads to odd differences in climate as one travels around the world. Where I live, in southern Missouri, is on about the same latitude as the southern tip of Spain and a good part of North Africa. Date palm trees grow in the latter, but not where I live. But it also is on the same latitude as much colder Korea.
The east-west configuration in Europe, we are told, is due entirely to the Atlantic current from the tropics that keeps, say, England, from being as frigid as Labrador, which is directly across the Atlantic from Britain.
But north is still north and south is still south, and Europe also has “continental” effects that are peculiar to the place. I’ll misspell them, but there is the oddity called the “mistral” and the desert wind from Africa called the “sirocco”.
In North America, there are highs and lows and variations in the jet stream, but most of the country is pretty “seasonal” within each climatic zone. We don’t get desert winds from North Africa, or anything like them, or dramatically frigid blasts from the North Pole unless we live pretty far to the north.
And so, it may well seem to western Europeans that climate is more erratic than it seems to us, particularly those of us who live well within the continent. Despite being on the same latitude as the southern tip of Spain, we can’t grow date palms…not ever…not even for one year. Nor can we grow vinifera graps, ever, even though they can in the Rhineland, which is far to the north of here. Never could, and probably never will. But it’s hot in the summer, always, much more so than (I understand) it ever is in France, and it lasts a lot longer than it does in Europe…always. A few years ago, there were thousands of deaths from heat in France. But we don’t get those deaths in Texas, despite the fact that a Frenchman dropped in Texas anytime during the summer would think he landed in hell. That’s because Texas is always incredibly hot in the summer, and nobody expects it to ever be otherwise. And nobody in Texas is unprepared or thinks it strange.
And nobody in New England is ever truly surprised when it gets terribly cold and snows three feet deep, because it does that in New England, regularly.
I have said before on here that when I was a kid, you couldn’t successfully grow a Bermuda grass hay crop north of Springfield, Mo, but you could south of it. Bermuda is a “warm season grass” and can’t thrive in cooler temperatures. It’s no different today, decades later. If there was MMGW, one would think the “Bermuda belt” would have crept at least a little bit north, but it hasn’t.
And so, to a North American, there is no discernible MMGW. Nobody experiences it. His grandfather’s recount of the heat and cold in his youth is the same as his own experience of them. And it’s a great deal easier to be skeptical of MMGW than it might be to a Frenchman who has only once in his lifetime (and perhaps his parents’ lifetimes) experienced the kind of heat people have in Texas every year without fail, and fully expect.
I did not presume that you or anybody else has malicious motives. I was merely proferring a possibility as to why offensive words were being directed the pope’s way, before ending with the thought that it might really be a simple matter of taste that could have been expressed more delicately and politely.
