Take all that toxic smoke from those Canadian wildfires, add temperatures we don’t see all that often in these parts, and you can concoct the stew of misery we’ve been fed for the last few days. But now, it’s Saturday afternoon and it looks like the worst is over, but you never know these days, do you? The temperature has finally begun to drop like it saw a hidden cop with a radar gun, and tomorrow’s report is for sunnier skies, but first, there is a tornado watch to get through, a swath of thunder storms headed our way along with some leftover Fourth of July fireworks.
For the past few days, it was hard to breath. Go outside and your eyes itched, your nose was clogged, and your lungs felt like they needed laundering. Inside, it wasn’t much better, but at least there was the World Cup to remind us that life goes on. But even that became tainted when Mr. Trump inserted himself into the dubious inner workings of Gianni Infantino’s FIFA and rendered us either sore losers or bullies or probably both. The American team acquitted itself well, but it’s too bad they weren’t able to maintain their dignity, albeit through no fault of their own.
As I write this, the sky is getting darker, the storm is coming closer. As it so happens, my wife and I are tending four of our grandkids this weekend while their parents are away— at the World Cup, no less. The goodness and inherent joy of this quartet have helped provide some healthy perspective and, hopefully, to mitigate the worst of all the bad weather and lousy air quality that have been loosed upon us. The kids do their chores, they laugh and play, and come nightfall, they sleep peacefully.
I didn’t watch Mr. Trump’s speech the other night. I’ve heard it all before and the day-after exegesis suggested there was nothing he said that hasn’t already been said: no proof of any election wrongdoing, no evidence to suggest that what happened six years ago was anything but a repudiation of a failed Presidency. That he has returned with such a vengeance is head-scratching, mind-numbing, and downright dangerous. The self-evident truths most of us have held dearly for the past 250 years are perilously close to crumbling, and there’s no telling if the upcoming midterm elections will be, in fact, upcoming, or if the shadow of hubris and fascism will creep deeper across the land. There’s no reliable radar for that kind of storm.
Toxicity is a measure of how poisonous a substance is and how it can affect living organisms. It is determined both by dosage and the specific interaction between a toxic substance and a biological system. We tend to think of it chemically, but lately, I can’t help but consider its diabolic political qualities. There are medicines and antidotes for chemical toxicity, but what remedies and cures are there for the pall of unhealthy miasma that is smothering our nation beyond anything those Canadian wildfires can inflect on us?
Paul Simon once sang that he could gather all the news he needed on the weather report. How I wish it were that simple! The storm is on top of us, the wind is blowing, the lightning is flashing, and the thunder is rolling. The lights are flickering.
Hold on.
I’ll be right back.
