We are doing our part to conserve energy during this current plague of winter weather. Overnight, we set the thermostat to an uncomfortably cool six degrees under our “normal” setting. I am wearing a pair of long-johns and multiple layers of uppers. Even so, I sit at my desk, feeling uncomfortably cold and cursing myself for my pivotal role in deciding to live in an unhospitable climate. At the same time, I offer sincere gratitude to blanket makers…to the creators of fabric that help retain body heat….to the inventors of heat pumps…to the distributors of insulating caulking…and to the manufacturers of thermally insulating windows. And my appreciation continues for all the others who have contributed by providing opportunities for a tolerable—if not comfortable—existence when Mother Nature is actively trying to kill us with brutally frigid temperatures temperatures. If, by suffering some discomfort, we can help minimize the likelihood of power-grid failure and the resulting discomfort and danger to thousands of others, we will have done the right thing. The moral thing. The selfless thing. The thing that elevates my loathing for selfish people—those miserable bastards—who refuse to sacrifice, just a little, to save the rest of us from freezing to death.
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When I was much younger, my body could better tolerate weather extremes than it can today. But I doubt my body was ever as weather-tolerant as were the people who braved weather extremes when pioneering westward expansion on this continent. Those people—the ones who survived—faced unimaginable challenges as they headed west. Weather was just one of many obstacles they encountered. The ones who died while trying to forge through to the west coast were more like me than the ones who made it. The successful pioneers must have been mutants or just extraordinarily lucky. I think the ones who stopped part way, settling in places with unimaginably horrid winters and/or summers, may have been too weak or too stupid to continue.
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Self-defensive rage, fed by the criminal behavior and lie-laden rhetoric of members and supporters of the current administration, consumes me. If I could, I would put an immediate and vengeful eternal end to the causes of that rage: irrevocable and irreversible. A decidedly chaotic reaction to indefensible words and deeds may be the only response capable of creating tranquility from its own shattered pieces.
