Rochester ranks for insomnia primarily based on tweeting about it

Take that, Liverpool (2nd) and Oklahoma City (4th) and Kuala Lumpur (6th). Rochester has you all beat.

Yes, as the Democrat and Chronicle recently reported, a study has found that

“Rochester is the most ‘insomnia-stressed’ city in the world.” In other words, we’re the champs of restless nights.

I’m not sure that this is brochure material for Bob Duffy and the folks at the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce, though Duffy has tweeted an explanation of sorts: “We just require less sleep in ROC,“ he told the world. “And we have more energy/caffeine.”

Duffy, and others, could raise some concerns about the “science” that has led to Rochester’s ranking. Evidently, it’s determined by tracking the number of tweets about stressed sleep that are generated in various places.

In other words, Rochesterians don’t just wake up in the night, they tweet about waking up in the night.

I find this questionable, as when I head to the bathroom at 3 a.m. I never think to tweet about the experience, then or later. Evidently, there are people who do.

There is much to keep people awake these days, though the survey isn’t quite clear about why Rochester insomniacs are more stressed than any other insomniacs in the world.

A few years ago, James Kaufmann, a pianist and the founder of the Rochester Soundscape Society, singled out loud car stereos as a serious disturbance that needed to be muffled by the enforcement of noise ordinances.

Public and police officials were quoted then, and later, as saying that the ordinances, though well-intended, were difficult to enforce, given their subjective nature. One person’s noise may be music to another person’s ears.

None of this was particularly new. One hundred years ago, in a July 1921 opinion piece in the Democrat and Chronicle, G. H. Cornelius had had enough with load car horns and the motorists who were breaking the rules with their loud honks.

I’m not sure how that worked out for him, but I suspect it didn’t. Over the years, as more cars and then car stereos came along, the noises may just have gotten more frequent and louder, as well.

And in the middle of the night those sounds may be less of a lullaby and more of a nuisance. Thus, local insomniacs presumably have a cookie and a glass of milk and fire off a Tweet, keeping Rochester’s restless ranking secure. Let’s sleep on that.

Nuts to us

Last week’s column on my new Large Nut Wizard, the device that’s helping my underpaid granddaughter Franny harvest a bumper crop of black walnuts, drew responses from around the area.

Taken together, the comment on Facebook tracked the area walnut harvest. Readers in Steuben County, Penfield and Irondequoit reported a low walnut yield. Readers elsewhere said they were inundated with walnuts. 

Turns out there’s a word for a heavy walnut drop. Christina Marie Das, a natural resources educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Monroe County Office, says that a time when trees overproduce nuts is what botanists call a “mast year.”

It’s a little mysterious as to why the trees mast. It could be the weather. It could be the tree’s way of making sure the squirrels and other nut eaters have enough food for the coming winter. It seems that nature takes care of its own, one black walnut at a time.

From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott, writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454