{"id":147759,"date":"2026-02-08T03:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T03:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/147759\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T03:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T03:56:10","slug":"these-days-i-could-use-a-nightcap-no-not-that-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/147759\/","title":{"rendered":"These days, I could use a nightcap (no, not that kind)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the Catalyst\u2019s Community Voices platform. We\u2019ve curated community leaders and thinkers from all parts of our great city to speak on issues that affect us all.\u00a0Visit our\u00a0Community Voices page<\/a>\u00a0for more details.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I wear a lot of hats.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean that figuratively. I own more than 50 of them, most in the category of sports caps.<\/p>\n

I wear them \u2013 even indoors \u2013 for several reasons. It\u2019s become a kind of trademark.<\/p>\n

I wear them to protect against sun damage and skin cancer.\u00a0 I wear them because cataract surgery left me sensitive to bright lights.<\/p>\n

And, yes, I suffer from the sin of vanity, so that I think I look a little better if you can\u2019t see the wasteland that once was a decent head of hair.<\/p>\n

As Elaine Benes once said to a girlfriend about George Costanza: \u201cHe\u2019s not bald. He\u2019s bald-ing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But of all the places I have worn a cap, I have never once worn one to bed. Tonight, with the polar bomb blast reaching its icy fingers across Florida, it may be the first time.<\/p>\n

During this frosty stretch of winter, I have slept well enough, wearing a long sleeve shirt, and pulling the covers up to my chin.<\/p>\n

Most people say that they sleep better in a cold room, but when a freeze makes everything in the house feel cold, I am awakened, imagining that all my body heat is escaping from the top of my head, with no rug of hair holding it in.<\/p>\n

Once I am awakened, I realize that a trip to the bathroom is in order.\u00a0 As I pitter-patter in bare feet across the tile floor, I can hear the north wind bending the trees and scraping the house. I am shivering.<\/p>\n

I need a cap. A nightcap. No, not a shot of whiskey. Something to wear on my head. Something to help me keep warm so I can sleep.<\/p>\n

On Christmas morning, my grandson Donovan offered a dramatic reading of \u201cThe Night Before Christmas.\u201d\u00a0 Written in 1823, it offered these lines: \u201cThe children were nestled all snug in their beds \/ While visions of sugarplums danced in their heads. \/ And Mama in her kerchief and I in my cap \/ Had just settled down for a long winter\u2019s nap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aha! \u00a0Mama slept with her head covered, and so did Papa.\u00a0 In the Golden Book edition from 1949, two of the three children, a boy and girl, are sleeping with their heads covered. We know, from what happens next, that this house had a chimney. But if they kept a fire in the fireplace, Santa would end up \u2013 like a lying politician \u2013 with his pants on fire.<\/p>\n

Remember how hot it was this past summer?\u00a0 It seemed like the air-conditioners would hum forever.\u00a0 Record heat turned global warming from a scientific abstraction into an irresistible force of nature. This week, global warming was the last thing on anyone\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

My meteorologist informed us that the frigid weather was attacking Florida from two of the coldest places on the face of the Earth: the North Pole and Siberia.<\/p>\n

I knew Putin had something to do with it! Just curious: Do they sleep with nightcaps in Greenland?<\/p>\n

Roy Peter Clark is a writing instructor and vice president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Catalyst\u2019s Community Voices platform. We\u2019ve curated community leaders and thinkers from all parts of our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-147759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-st-pete","9":"tag-st-pete-headlines","10":"tag-st-pete-news","11":"tag-st-petersburg","12":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","13":"tag-st-petersburg-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}