I would like to personally thank President Trump for steering Hurricane Dorian well clear of Alabama (and parts of Florida) through the sheer force of his will. That was a close one. If the president had not been closely monitoring the situation between rounds at his golf club in Virginia, this thing could have gotten rough. It’s still pretty bad: We have a couple of small branches […]
Dorian J. Trump
Dorian. Never met anyone named Dorian, unless you count “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” I finally got around to reading that a few years ago. Oscar Wilde. The book was sort of controversial in 1890. It’s about a guy who makes a deal with, if not the devil, then at least a Jeffrey Epstein-like character, if Jeffrey Epstein had been a gifted painter instead of a gifted […]
Stormy weather
Today I went to Publix, thinking I should do something to prepare for the approach of a Category 4 hurricane. But the only thing I bought of a hurricane nature was a case of bottled water. Publix had big pallets of it stationed around the store, and most people seemed to be grabbing at least one. I did too. If everybody had been grabbing big sacks of […]
It’s been hot. But I can’t complain
Here’s the NOAA saying July 2012 is the hottest month on record. I haven’t been keeping independent records during my odyssey through the West, but that sounds about right. From the day I left Florida on June 22, I’ve never stopped anyplace where people weren’t complaining about the heat. That continues right up through today, at my Mom’s place here in Sheridan, Mont. It’s pushing into the […]
Smoke on the water
Florida can be brutal enough on a day like today, when the temperature is pushing 100 and the humidity is hovering around 120 percent. If you’re stupid enough to walk the dog, it feels like you’re pushing through hot molasses. Then you add in dense smoke from the Georgia brush fires, and voila! You’ve got your own little slice of hell. I’m starting to understand why Andrew […]
It certainly is September
It’s not fall yet, but tonight it came close. A cool wind blew through Wichita and suddenly it was in the 60s, which is not so remarkable unless you’ve spent the last few months cursing relentless runs of three-digit days. It’s like somebody finally opened a window in a very hot room: It’s now plausible that the days are getting shorter and the long Midwest summer is […]
Beating the heat with ice-cold fiction
It’s another hot and muggy afternoon in Wichita, which got me thinking about books that feel cold. Not emotionally cold, necessarily, but evocative enough of snow and ice and winter wind to put a chill into even a stifling summer day in the Midwest. One of the chilliest books I’ve ever read is “Smilla’s Sense of Snow,” written by Peter Hoeg in 1993. Here’s how it starts […]