Earth Matters: Obligatory weather

I watch as rain—hard rain—beats the puddles outside into froth. Wind periodically flashes water against the window and surfs across the puddles. It feels Pacific-Northwest but decidedly not maritime. The end of May at 9,000 feet at the head of the draw.

Henrietta reads weather on the radio; precipitation for days but snow accumulation expected to be less than an inch. It could be worse: I remember one Memorial Day with 18 inches of fresh on the yellow daffodils. Weather-wise folks predict one thing for sure is that the weather will change. Yeah? So change it.

Actually the weather is just fine, demonstrating again how it is foolish to write about weather. I decry cold and damp because so soon after winter, I’d like sunshine in bluebird skies. Typical monsoon moisture arrived early this summer; I wonder if we should anticipate late summer drought…better to just be here now.

There is any number of reasons not to write about weather. Certainly its relevance in the greater scheme of things is suspect; farmers and climatologists pay attention while the rest of us enjoy and endure. Although we affect climate, we are at the mercy of local weather. Inter-relationships between the two are complex.

During May year before last, weather was sunny and warm encouraging spring beauties and pasque flowers. Last year, May was cold and snowy, accumulating additional inches on an already overwhelming snowpack. We thought winter might never end. This year’s rain is at least falling on mostly snow-free ground; a mosaic of green contrasts with winter’s monochrome. This isn’t so bad.

Whether we prefer rain or shine, since we can’t do anything about it, it’s not worth getting exercised over. Yet we attend weather forecasts like religion. During winter, I devour information from as many sources as I can find. I pride myself on having discovered the resources and developed the vocabulary to understand them.

“Since we can’t do anything about it,” asked a friend, “why the hell are you writing about it?”

“Politics is boring,” I answered. “It’s the same old stuff.” The economy is in the toilet, one bunch wants torture, and another bunch doesn’t. Wars rage, politicians point fingers and give lie to anything that can be called post-partisanship. What is left to say?

Weather is a relatively safe subject unless I unwisely talk about climate change and global warming. I have one friend who steadfastly insists there is no such thing as climate change. I liken him to someone who some years ago, refused to accept the spherical nature of the Earth. And he doesn’t want to hear any Chicken Little carbon footprint bullshit from me.

It is futile to proselytize someone who doesn’t want to be convinced. Science tells me our climate is changing and my human actions are accelerating it. But one person’s science is another’s smoke and mirrors. I wonder when my friend last walked where a glacier used to be…probably never.

Climate is one of those macro things we will ignore until too late, and then we will suffer. Politics might someday affect the climate, but it probably can never change the weather. I will be already recycled when polar bears are extinct, when deserts claim our continents and oceans inundate our shorelines.

Weather on the other hand, provides common ground for complaint or approbation. We can debate whether climate is changing, whether or not we cause it, whether we can adapt or fix it. But we will agree that it’s raining or sunny, or whether we’d like it to stop snowing and melt. We can disagree about climate, but not so much about weather.

Moreover, in the ski and tourism business, we qualify as farmers of snow and sunny summer climatologists. Rainy days limit enthusiasts who want to get out in it, but rain serves to melt stuff out and make plants grow. Since the snowpack melted so quickly from under its winter red dusting, rain washes and greens it up.

My weather sources tell me it might rain for a while. But in my experience, only fools and those paid big bucks attempt to predict the weather. Moreover, in a few weeks, the days start getting shorter; that is totally predictable. In the meantime, duck the showers, dodge any lightning that might threaten and try to ignore the persistent wind. Rest assured: The weather will change.

Earth Matters: It's the spin

My head is empty. The space between my ears is a void where occasionally random thoughts scatter on the edge of perception. Good stuff that, if not entirely productive. My empty head is probably a be-here-now state wherein the soul moves spontaneously through life and time. Productive is good, too, though; the cursor summons.

The cursor can have no idea how difficult it is to answer its call. We pundits had it too easy for too long, when outrage spurred the cursor across the page. Now, instead of the left-wing bitching about the right, the right-wing is bitching about the left. Maybe it’s only liberal-leaning pundits who are scrambling for something to go off on.

Thankfully, at least from one perspective, the Bush Administration is staying in the news. George W. Bush himself is keeping a fairly low profile—thank the gods—mountain biking, nurturing his two longhorn steers and practicing not stepping in it.

Instead, former vice-President Cheney is trying to salvage some kind of legacy, or maybe just come clean and hope his ass doesn’t land in the slammer. While in office, Cheney was a quiet, behind the scenes kind of guy. He was an eminence gris who with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove and the other neo-conservative whackos, pulled George W. Bush’s strings. Previously so laconic, it seems out of character for Dick Cheney now to be spilling his guts.

But spilling—and spinning—he is. Cheney told Fox News, “I don’t think we should just roll over when the new administration…accuses us of committing torture…” Cheney credited aggressive interrogation techniques with saving potentially “hundreds of thousands of lives.”

In another interview, defending policies he helped orchestrate, Cheney said Bush authorized the “enhanced” interrogation techniques. “I think those programs were absolutely essential,” said Cheney, “to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11.” He expressed “no regrets.”

Cheney also criticized President Obama, saying America is not as safe under the Obama Administration. “He is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.”

In yet another interview, Cheney spun himself off the deep end. According to Associated Press, Cheney expressed his preference for right-wingnut radio commentator Rush Limbaugh over former Secretary of State, patriot and soldier General Colin Powell. “If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican,” said Cheney, “I’d go with Rush Limbaugh.” Yeah, well I guess that figures since having had enough of the mendacious Bush-Cheney cabal, and after having essentially destroyed his career, Powell washed his hands of the whole mess.

For his part, Rush Limbaugh is in the position of having a wealth of material with which to rail against Barack Obama. Obama personally affronts Rush Limbaugh, the same way George Bush got under my skin. I know how Limbaugh feels; it’s scary.

Limbaugh wants Obama to fail, and it doesn’t matter whether Obama actually fixes anything or not. The means, according to Limbaugh, justifies no end. “I hope Obama fails,” said Limbaugh. “Somebody’s gotta say it… Why in the world do we want to saddle [our kids] with more liberalism and socialism? Why would I want to do that? So I can answer in four words, ‘I hope he fails’.”

Grasping hopelessly at a failed past, and for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, Dick Cheney and his minions are looking to the likes of Rush Limbaugh for leadership. Nothing could better demonstrate the failure of the Republican Party to find its ass with both hands. Spinning Obama to the dark side is a sorry effort to refute the determination of American voters.

For my part, I don’t want Obama to fail at fixing the world economy, restoring tenets of our Constitution and re-establishing moral high ground so readily abandoned by Bush and the rest. Furthermore, it is difficult to dislike a man whose own self-deprecating humor can defuse or enlighten a situation.

Still, I’m working to develop a sixth sense, a highly-refined and sophisticated bullshit meter, a functional sensory perception to filter information. It is important to occasionally calibrate my spin meter with the truth, whatever that is and wherever it might be found. The effort should keep my head full and not empty, which may be productive…or not.

Earth Matters: Wipe your nose

No question: more people are sick of it than are sick with it. This isn’t our first big rodeo, after all, so how can a flu virus throw us into such a tizzy? But a tizzy we are in, mass hysteria fueled by a news media intent on keeping us healthy, informed and on the edge of our seats. At the end of the day, though, the barrage of scare-mongering is better than not knowing.

People weren’t as well-informed back in 1918 when another flu virus spread throughout the world, to the Arctic, to remote islands…everywhere. The so-called Spanish Flu pandemic lasted two years, infecting more than half the world population and killing as many as 100 million people.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) calls the 1918 influenza “the mother of all pandemics.” Almost all flu viruses since that bug got loose are descendants of the 1918 virus. In 1918, health care workers were too ill to tend the sick and grave-diggers too far gone to bury the dead.

So what’s the difference between epi-demic and pan-demic? Epi- means almost all; pan- means all. An epidemic spreads rapidly and extensively affecting many individuals in an area or population at the same time. A pandemic is a widespread epidemic over a great geographic area, affecting a large proportion of the population. A human pandemic in our global village could conceivably touch practically everyone.

Although we didn’t have television to rub it in back in 1918, we were scared. Rather than providing too much information like we have now, the government downplayed the influenza, spinning the country into confronting World War I cannons instead of the flu. Disinformation: some things never change.

Viruses do change, however, and the 1918 flu virus finally mutated into a less virulent and deadly beast. People stopped dying, got well and went about their business. And in the frenzy of world war, we the public forgot the whole thing. The CDC didn’t forget, though, and estimates about 36,000 U.S. deaths each year from flu.

We started paying attention again in the late 1990s when avian flu spread into our human population. Bird flu is a different breed of slime than our current swine flu. Instead of spawning in pigs it occurs in wild birds and can spread quickly to domestic fowl. In 2005, bird flu hit five states, Asia, Europe and Canada.

After bird flu, for the first time in modern history, we began to understand how easily seasonal flu outbreaks could evolve into epidemics. On our constantly shrinking planet, we could conceive of a pandemic, an unknown viral messenger carrying doom on international flights throughout the world. Scary stuff, that.

And in April when swine flu suddenly swept out of Mexico after killing scores of people, I admit: it scared hell out of me. Several circumstances contributed to my paranoia. This was the first time I had watched a pandemic spread on television, itself a viral medium. Watching people in masks was sobering.

Furthermore, the bug was an unknown strain of virus, something new that we couldn’t identify and for which we had no silver bullet flu shot. Lastly, this flu was killing people, not in Asia or some far-flung cauldron of contagion. Instead, people were dying right here in North America, just south of the border…too close for comfort.

Perhaps paranoia is too strong a word; after all, paranoids catch the flu too. So I am one of those who washes his hands until they chap. I don’t sign with public pens, I sanitize the grocery cart, I don’t use handrails and I touch doorknobs only with my outside fingers. As a result, I don’t get sick too often. Yeah, I know…I’ve been called that before.

Maybe I watch too much scare-television or maybe I read too many “outbreak” novels. Maybe it’s because up here at the head of the draw we aren’t continuously exposed to nasty viruses. And maybe it’s because I feel too readily the global nature of our modern lives; one minute you’re in Mexico City, eight hours later you’re anywhere in the world.

Undoubtedly, a nightmare pandemic will happen because historically influenza pandemics of varying severity occur at 20-40 year intervals. In 2004, one World Health Organization director described an influenza pandemic as “inevitable.” Don’t worry, though, and don’t be scared because that might weaken your immune system. But don’t cough, don’t sneeze and wipe your nose. Then go wash your hands.