DON'T HAVE TO BE A WEATHERMAN

caterpillar


This winter I've tested what might be called home remedies found on these lists of wonderful tips that come Fw: in emails from friends. One told about putting vinegar on the car windshield to keep ice from sticking to the glass. The ice froze to the glass like never before, like it had bonded with the glass. Also wiped vinegar in the inside of the windshield, which created the first time I've ever had to scrape ice off the inside of the windshield. Scrapers are made for the convex curve of the windshield, not the inside concave curve.


Another I've tested this year, keeping an onion in every room to keep colds and flu away. This morning I woke with a running nose telling me a cold is beginning. First thought upon realizing I was getting a cold: the onions didn't work. If this were a corporate remedy, I'd be told I didn't do it right. Whatever the case, neither of these remedies worked, which was my initial suspicion when I saw the emails, but wrote the suspicion off as my jaundiced view of the world. Give it a chance, I thought. Didn't hurt anything, except I had about the worst ice ever to scrape off the glass, and now I have a cold. Still have some tylenol cold pills from last cold several years ago.



I have tested these hypotheses (presented as facts) empirically by scientific method to see if I could reproduce the results projected. Did not. Advice to perform these remedies gave no results of controlled studies, nothing to go by to attempt reproduction of similar outcomes. In the past, I've tried the spraycan remedy at the auto parts store of windshield de-icer. It made more ice. After quite a lot of winters, my empirical finding is that a plastic scraper works like nothing else. It's a handy little item that can be found for next to nothing at parts stores. I keep my scraper in what I think of as the tool box space for such things in the car's front door with 2 kinds of screwdrivers, an adjustable wrench and needle nose pliers. I've also found the windshield cleaning fluid that comes in a gallon jug advertised to work below freezing, doesn't. It makes more ice. Maybe above 25 degrees it works, but down around 10 and 5 it doesn't work so well, makes 2 Japanese fans of ice on the glass. The scraper works every time.



After 30 years of driving 3 Toyotas where the windshield de-frost only cleared the bottom quarter of the glass, I could see the hood clearly. The Buick's windshield de-icer works right now. Turn it on and the fog on the glass is gone. The heater works so well it can run me out in a hurry. The AC is not so cool. It cools the air to a degree, but never gets cold. Probably needs new freon, and I see no need for it yet. Sometimes in the mountains AC is a good thing on a summer day. In my 35 years in the mountains, the hottest day of the summer has advanced from 90 degrees to 100 degrees. Makes me wonder about the sanity of republicans, but we already know what that amounts to. It strikes me totally ridiculous that an American political party has for dogma required belief that scientific evidence is invalid, has no value, has no meaning. Makes me barf to think of such people making the laws of my homeland.


We are over the top on the Wheel of Fortune and running fast as we can go down the hill. India and China were the examples of the poorest of the poor the first half of last century. When we were at the top, they were at the bottom. They are now rising to the top and we're on our way down there where they used to be, crime and corruption the only work that pays, half our population believing evolution a hoax as a matter of political dogma and global warming the same kind of hoax for reasons of dogma. We'll be seeing what willful ignorance reaps. We already have, but the only people that see it are the ones with no power. We'll also see what a focus on nothing but money reaps. We already have, and again, like before, only the ones without power see it.


We are subject to the storms of war and economic calamity created by the ones with power, the same as we're subject to hurricanes and sunny skies. As far as we the people are concerned, it just is as it is. When it rains, use an umbrella. When it's hot, wear shorts. In winter, keep anti-freeze in the car. We will be learning over the next several decades what the Chinese have known for centuries and millennia, to lean with the way the wind blows. The ones with the power that make our decisions, we already know operate from self-interest only, even (especially) the ones that say they don't. When half the American electorate denies the findings of science in order to conform to a political dogma having to do with money, I think we have become the PeeWee Herman Show. Miss Yvonne, Mailman Mike, Chairy. Tell em Large Marge sent ya. I know you are, but what am I? Take a picture, it'll last longer.



*