WAKE UP!

Last week I was forced to turn on my air conditioner. Not that the heat itself was all that bad, but the humidity was horrendous. This was not an unexpected event. Once each year I turn on the AC for the first time that year. The problem was that I turned it on April 4.

Once upon a time I waited until Memorial Day to turn on the AC with little or no problem. Hell, in 1985 I lived in a duplex that didn’t have AC: zip, nil, nada. I survived. Later I waited until Memorial Day because I was pig-headed (it runs in the family). It was my little red badge of courage to wait until the end of May to start hemorrhaging money out of my pocket and into the pocket of the local utility company. A few years ago I decided that being pig-header was way stupid. I only joked about waiting until Memorial Day to hit the switch. Mid May was OK. Recently, early May has seen me give in. But April 4? That’s unreasonable. Even at that, I spent a couple of nights with all the windows open, fans twirling, and a little sweaty beneath the sheets.

ENOUGH! This has become an issue with me.

The sand fleas that attract pompano on the Florida Atlantic coast never showed up this year so the pompano never showed up either. The sailfish that draw hundreds of deep-water sport fishing enthusiasts to the Florida Atlantic coast each winter did not come either. Warmer than normal waters in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico have been blamed for the rougher than normal hurricane season in 2005. They’re saying the Atlantic is currently warmer than ever and are calling for another tough hurricane season this year. Chunks of Antarctic and Greenland ice the size of Texas are melting and disappearing. Glaciers all over the world are receding faster than they're being replenished. The snows of Kilimanjaro made famous by Ernest Hemingway in 1952 are almost gone.

Gasoline prices are climbing. Working poor families are hemorrhaging cash just to be able to drive to minimum wage jobs. The cost of anything that has to be shipped between the manufacturer and the consumer has risen. Manufacturers and retailers are not absorbing increased expenses due to higher transportation costs. Those costs are being transferred along to the consumers as fast as the kid at the Quicki-Mart can climb the ladder and slap the new numbers on the sign. To top that off, we’ve recently given the oil companies extravagant tax breaks. Furthermore, it seems that several years ago we quit asking oil extraction companies for royalty payments for offshore drilling. It seems their lobby is deep into the right pockets (including a cadre of Democratic federal legislators from oil producing states). At one time I believed that the CEO of Exxon-Mobil just wanted to send his kid to a better camp each summer. Later I was convinced he was out to BUY his kid a better camp each summer. Now I firmly believe he’s buying third world countries for his kid and looking to upgrade all the time.

ENOUGH!

Get your heads out of your assholes and say ENOUGH! Quit letting politicians lead us down the path to global destruction. Never take the word of anybody over fifty years old who says global warming doesn’t exist. These fools will me molding in their graves before it gets bad. They’re cheating their children out of a future. They are stealing YOUR grand children’s future.

With national elections in 2008, we have the opportunity to tell our leaders how we feel about this. Vote for people who make this an issue through their campaigns. Candidates for President, Congress, Governors, state legislators, mayors, aldermen, and dogcatchers should be forced to state their intentions regarding our planet and should be held responsible for those stances. Honorable individuals that truly want to address these problems and create solutions deserve our votes. Candidates whose heads are stuck so far up the assholes of energy industry CEOs deserve nothing but the shit already seeping from their mouths.

Make it an issue. Get involved. Learn the issues. Tell your friends what you think. Ask candidates what they think.

“We only have a short time to live, and it is essential, therefore, to do things that are worthwhile and to do them now.” Robert S.S. Baden-Powell, 1922

Upcoming rite of passage

At 2:43 am on April 19 I'll exit my late forties and enter the early fifties. In recognition of being able to celebrate, I've written a poem.


FIFTY

When I was young my moustache was red,
I’d awake in the morning and leap out of bed.
Now I’m older my moustache is white,
And now every morning I mourn the dead night.

When I was younger I hustled and bustled,
My belly was flat and my arms were more muscled.
Now age has given me the grace to slow down,
And my well padded middle brings a brief frown.

No shine on my pate I’ve still got my hair,
For two or three floors I’ll still climb the stair.
I call them my friends, my small aches and pains,
As I gobble the pills my kit now contains.

I used to work hard to accomplish a task,
Rush into things, no questions to ask.
Now I think hard so the task is more easy,
I get the job done and my breath is not wheezy.

The new slower pace is not all that bad,
I’ve time now to contemplate the great friends I’ve had.
I pause now and then to think what’s occurred,
To smell a flower, or study a bird.

And I’ve learned some good things over the years,
Like shutting my mouth and opening my ears.
If it feels good do it and if it hurts stop,
Whatever goes up will eventually drop.

For all that has passed I have no complaints,
For I’ve enjoyed most of it and learned my constraints.
Fifty I’ve reached blow a horn bang the drum,
I look with great pleasure for what’s yet to come.