Weather Ramblings.

The thermometer mounted on the garage has a portrait of a moose on the face, more appropriate to Alaska than Iowa and because it faces the morning sun the dial has been pegged out so many times that the indicated temperature is about 20 degrees above actual. So in keeping with the use of heat indexes and wind chill factors I have termed this discrepancy the moose factor. How the present Iowa temperature would feel to an Alaskan moose stuck in the flat-lands.
There has been the usual carping about the weather this week as the temperatures have hovered in the 90's. Those that tend to whine the loudest expierience it for only a short dash between the air conditioned car to the air conditioned building and back again.
Perhaps I have grown callous to the weather whining having lived in Alaska where if you waited for perfect weather you would never do anything. I don't mean to downplay the actual dangers associated with severe weather, but our definition of extreme, on both ends of the thermometer, has been expanded as we have become so averse to any sort of discomfort or danger in our lives. We have replaced common sense and vigilance with fear and paranoia and want to go through life at optimum conditions (sunny and 70) and in a cocoon of safety.
I can recall as a kid spending sweltering summer nights camped in the back yard, even when the late evening thunderstorms rumbled through. Parents would never allow such behavior now. Our local TV is preempted by competing meteorologists that are whipped into a frenzy at the first sign of a towering cumulus and sirens urge us into our basements even when our skies are blue and actual weather events are miles and miles away. In winter, school cancellations begin with the first forecast of snow and in my last two winters here I have not yet witnessed a snowfall that would have prevented the buses or the teachers from getting to school. Heaven forbid a trek to the bus stop in the snow.
So we all complain about the one thing that we cannot control, but more importantly we fear it. Fear it’s too hot, fear it’s too cold, fear it might rain or snow, or worst of all many have bought into the fear that mother earth has a fever.