The Heat

July is generally hot but not generally as hot as this July has been.

The entire nation, from coast to coast, from North to South from East to West, is in a slow roast bakethon with temperatures soaring into the high 90’s in many areas.

Does it seem hotter than usual and does it appear there is more heat everywhere than ever before?

Yes it does – but then, what do we as layman know about the weather? Not very much.

That being said, all this heat everywhere and all the terrible storms, tornados, flash floods and wild fires that go along with it, seem to indicate that something has changed about the climate.

Experts charting such things call it climate change.

There are those scientists who believe the climate has changed and we have changed it and there are those scientists who simply relate climate changes to be part of the earth’s natural aging process.

It is probably a bit of both although climate change as a result of the industrialization of the earth must be connected.

How could it not be so?

Which brings us back to the heat of this summer 2012.

Eastie is indeed in a slow roast but then, nearly every July of our lives has been hot and every July of our parents lives have been hot and every July of their parents lives has been hot and on and on until the time of the first settling of this area when the Indians understood that the middle of the summer was hot from year to year and adjusted their plantings to reflect that.

When the neighborhood roasts, we roast with it.

And the neighborhood is indeed roasting during this hottest of July’s in quite sometime.

Garbage left out becomes an immediate bad scene. Odors from sewers take on a new countenance. And people themselves are hard to be around such as on a crowded bus or in the subway.

What to do about it?

Go down to the beach. Sit in front of an air conditioner. Pour water over your head.

Stay cool. Hydrate. Enjoy the summer and take each day as it comes.

And if your air conditioner isn’t working, it doesn’t do much good to blame the heat on climate change.

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