It's Hot,Hot, Hot

When I was a child and would spend time at my grandparent's house in London, Ohio, I would study the titles of two framed pictures that hung in their entrance hall. One was a picture of an old man walking through the deep snow at dusk with a jug of molasses. His arm hung down at his side and his finger was grasping the curved handle of the jug. He was dressed in a slouch hat and a heavy overcoat and the picture was from the rear. Trailing behind him was a visible stream of molasses dribbling out of the earthenware jug into the snow. Up ahead quite a distance away was the farm house that was probably his destination. The caption read," IGNORANCE IS BLISS." Another picture was of a few people struggling along with their bodies bent against the blustery wind. One hand on their heads to keep the hats from blowing away and the other hand clutching their coats to their bodies.The trees were bent against the wind just as the people were. The caption on this one read, "THE WEATHER'S THE WEATHER, WHETHER OR NOT." On many occasions I would ask my grandpa what those pictures and their captions meant. He would make an attempt to explain them to me, but his words were never sufficient enough to let me think that I fully understood these conumdrums.

Today is October the 12th. Columbus Day, the leaves have not turned the rich, fall colors this year the way they usually do by Columbus Day. The Oak leaves are brown and crisp, as they fall to the parched ground. The grass, no longer green, not from an early frost but rather from the drought that has us in its throes. The temperature today is 92 degrees and has been in the nineties for much of July, August, September, and thus far in October. It is no longer difficult to convince us that Global Warming may be a problem for mankind. The Native Americans tried to teach us to take care of the Earth by setting examples for us but we ignored the suggestions they made and bowed to the pressures of the easy way out life style that we've adopted.

As I think about the two picture captions that I mentioned above I am still wondering what they mean. Grandpa tried his hardest to teach me but... Now I wonder are we being blissfully ignorant of the role we are playing in the warming of the globe? Are we responsible at all for this weather? Did we have anything to do with it? Or is the weather the weather, whether or not?