Transthought

Weather Incidentally

Everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it. So goes the common saying. The weather has been very much in the news lately what with record breaking heat waves from coast to coast. The heat wave broke last night with a vengeance, disrupting flight schedules in a vicious way. Chicago was particularly hard hit.

But the heat has taken its toll in St. Louis, California, New York and almost everywhere else in the country. A heat wave is an inconvenient truth, to borrow a phrase from Al Gore. I find myself in air conditioned places almost 95% of the time, so far, as I ride in an automobile, shop in a store, rest in my living room, or go to the classroom. I don't wear shorts and I almost always wear long sleeves.

The same holds true in winter. I hardly ever find myself wearing overcoats, hats, scarves, boots, etc., because I have heat wherever I happen to be. It is amazing to me, then, that people are so concerned about the weather. We have done something about it with our modern heating and cooling systems. The weather is almost incidental to what I have to do.

I watch the construction workers perspiring in this dreadful heat, and I rejoice that I do not have to be out there. I hear people mowing the lawn, and I rejoice that I do not have to do that any longer. I see pictures on television and in the newspapers of those who do have to cope with the heat, and I rejoice that I am not so affected. And then I think that today my power could go out, my car air conditioner may fail, and things could change drastically in a moment.

So I am not immune even in this comfortable existence that is mine. The paper tells this morning of a singer who discovered she had breast cancer despite her disciplined life. Bad things to happen to good people and there is little protection or insurance against them. This kind of thinking is what helps some cope with death; they observe that death is part of life and that's that. I suppose that is so.

In the meantime, the hot weather is abating today and that should change the headlines to something else. Did anybody do anything about it, or do something to cause the change? I doubt it, and so the week continues.

Wayne's Words for August 3, 2006.

posted by Wayne Olson @ 9:02 AM