(The great Ice Sheets of the last and unlamented Ice Age, from which we are still emerging. Check it out. Image courtesy of Treehugger.com)
Well, summer arrived early this morning and I am wearing a sweater in normally torrid Arlington. It was a strange and elongated Spring- I hope it does not mean another Ice Age is commencing. They used to talk about that a lot, but I suspect they dropped the concept since the ice would have to actually appear for people to take it seriously.
The whole anthropomorphic climate change thing is much more subtle, since no one cane really tell why temperatures have soared almost a whole degree (Celsius) in more than a hundred years, and while the deadly (hahaha) greenhouse gas continues to increase in concentration, the temperature has stalled for a decade and a half, and people are still getting hysterical about it.
I for one would rather have it a bit warmer than colder, but the planet will do what it will do regardless of what we think.
I saw a graphic about how thick the sheets of ice and snow were in the historical think an ice sheet three times the height of the CN Tower in Toronto would be inconvenient, but the Canadians are innovative people.
I assume the ice would stop at the Border, since the DHS folks are pretty severe about security these days, and alien snow is still…well, alien and undocumented. Chicago and Boston ought to have a plan, though, as I am sure Mayor Bloomberg does.
One theory I heard was that he would permit as many re-fills of 32-oz. soft drinks so long as they were all filled up to the brim with crushed ice. Clever man.
It took a long time for those sheets to build up, so I am not going to worry about changing my winter plans just yet. But I am definitely crossing Montreal off any plans for summer vacations.
The Longest Day normally conjures up images of the invasion of Normandy, or at least it does for those of us of a certain age.
I will never forget the epic film about D-Day of the same name, with an international cast of thousands. Many of the older stars actually had parts in the Greatest Story of the Century, but they are almost all gone now. This is just the longest day of the year, which would cause Old Jim at the Willow Bar to wince and declare that “They are all the same goddamn length, you moron. It is the amount of daylight that changes!”
Jim is a stickler for accuracy, and it is important to remember that. In fact, that was one of the topics under discussion by The Lovely Bea, Placid Lovely Jamie and Jon-without-an-H at the bar last night.
I did not know whether to celebrate the day or not, based on the magnitude of impending change, but decided to stop on the way home anyway. So what if China is about to melt down, Mr. Obama is going to double the taxes on carbon (didn’t he mean carbon dioxide?) and the Stock Market is taking it on the chin to the tune of 500 points of bear trading in just two days.
I spent a good part of the afternoon attempting to not check the balance on the 401K, which I have an uncomfortable feeling is about to take a hit that could amount to a third of the total value. Freaking Bernanke. I bet his 401k is a lot better than ours.
I did have a reason to drink some of the excellent sauvignon blanc that Brett was dispensing as the Happy Hour white.
The good news is that low interest rates, lack of inventory, and anxiety about the future got me the contract on my condo. The bad news is that interest rates are going up, there is a lack of rental inventory, and I have just put myself out of Arlington (and the easy stop at Willow) unless I can figure something out, muy pronto.
The topic was so serious that Jon-without dove direct into a gigantic glass of Bombay Sapphire gin with two olives. The Lovely Bea contemplated what vodka would go well with water and lime, and Brett-the-bartender came up with Chopin, with is either made with potatoes or grain, I forget which, and delivered an astonishing creation to the space on the bar in front of her:
The damned thing looked like a palm tree, best I could determine, but Mayor Bloomberg would have been pleased at the amount of crushed ice.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com