The Times They Are A-Changing

 During this latest warm spell, several daily records were broken in Northern Michigan, records that had been set in 1957. That must have been the year that my grand parents went to Florida for the holidays, and we had warmer temps in Chicago than they had in Florida. Around four o'clock yesterday morning, when the temps were still in the 50s, the wind kicked up as predicted. Our electricity blinked off several times, but it came right back on again. I thought we were going to lose it for sure, but we didn't. This evening I saw on the news that thousands of people in our region are still without power, and some of them won't be back on until tomorrow or even Sunday. Meanwhile, the South is being ravaged by floods and tornadoes.

Weather forecasting has gotten way better in our lifetimes, but it will probably never be perfect because there are so many variables. National Geographic had an article this month about global warming, specifically about the Arctic sea ice melting away. One school of thought is that changes in the Arctic sea ice will have serious impacts on global climate, but another school of thought says that the changes in the Arctic are being caused by changes in the Pacific Ocean currents. Another school of thought says that changes in the Pacific are being caused by the same "greenhouse effect" that is causing the Arctic sea ice to melt. They all seem to agree that there are a lot of changes going on, and that one is bound to effect the other.

National Geographic had another article about how viewing nature reduces stress. They hook people up to some kind of machine that measures physical stress symptoms like blood pressure, heart rate, and brain waves. They have discovered that you don't even need to go outside to benefit from this, all you need to do is look out the window or even look at a picture of nature to reduce your stress levels. The study subjects have been mostly urban office worker types who are looking for ways to reduce the stress in their lives, but I wonder if there is such a thing as too little stress. This might explain why I have been sleeping so much lately, I am overexposed to nature around here. Look out any window of our house, and all you see is nature. Most of the pictures on our walls are nature scenes, the same with our calendars. Even the 20 minute drive into town is mostly through rural settings, and only the last five minutes or so is in any kind of traffic. Of course the traffic here is nothing like in the big cities, you would need to drive a hundred miles to Traverse City to see anything remotely close to that, and we have no reason to go there.

We aren't going to my daughter's tomorrow because her boyfriend is in the hospital with cancer. They say it's inoperable but "treatable" with radiation. It always makes me nervous when they say "treatable" instead of "curable", but I suppose they don't want to make any promises they can't keep. They told him that this type of treatment is usually about 75% effective on this type of cancer. I don't know what that means about long term survival, though, because cancer has a way of coming back on you. Anyway, my daughter is in no position to host a dinner party right now, but she says she might be able to do it next weekend.