A lot of people avoid watching the news anymore. After years of turning it on and realizing that the world situation was desperate as usual, we stopped tuning in. My brother, Michael, still watches sometimes and is happy to share what he learns with us.
Dear Camille and Bob,
I’ve been watching the news again. They are already promoting the next flu shot for this year. Last year the flu was the big panic. I remember a story about how people in California were standing in line in the hot weather for hours to get a shot and one lady died of a heat stroke before she was able to get her shot.
Now the big panic seems to be Hurricane Rita. Not to make the same mistakes that were made during Katrina, folks are now so intent on evacuating that, according to the news, the highways out of the cities are turning into “parking lots” and people are just sitting in there cars for hours with the engines running and they are running out of gas. The news reports it as if they “need” air conditioning in there cars because of hot weather and that is why they don’t shut their cars off. Then they show a black girl just walking around on the free way instead of sitting in her car like everyone else. They question her as if she is nuts for just walking around on the free way as she tells them she needs to stretch her legs.
The government is planning on sending fuel trucks to the stranded motorists as part of the emergency plan (how they will actually get to the cars I don’t know). This is crazy. I mean this is a matter of survival to get away from the coast and people are getting stranded because they have to have there air conditioning while they just sit on the highway for 5 or 6 hours at a time without moving. I don’t think I’ve ever had an air-conditioned vehicle my whole life and I have survived traffic jams in heat waves by doing what that black chick did. I traveled from Colorado to Pennsylvania in the middle of summer without air conditioning. People don’t seem to realize that your body adjusts to different temperatures if you let it. Just drink a lot of water. But I guess if you’ve never been in the heat for any period of time before without scurrying to the nearest air conditioned venue within minutes, maybe experiencing the real temperature would be a shock to the system. People need to toughen up. I feel that we are becoming like the aliens; totally dependent upon technology until eventually we won’t even have a planet to live in and just be floating around in a mother ship somewhere.
Anyway, hope you guys are having fun up here in the mountains. No threat of storm surge here, ha, ha.
Love, Michael
