Whittling Away with Dick Brooks - Climate Change

I’m beginning to think that there may be something to this idea of global climate change.  It seems that our usual spring has been replaced with a monsoon season.  It has been raining forever and just keeps on coming.  Just last month my favorite weatherman was telling me that we were inches below the level of annual rainfall that we usually get. I’m not sure how they arrive at this average, being scientists, I’m sure it involved making a bunch of mathematical calculations and sneaking a peek or two at  the “Old Farmers Almanac”.  However they do it, it seems that now we are inches above the annual average and we’re supposed to get another one or two inches today.  The seven day forecast has rain clouds over six of the days.  I guess it’s something I’ll just have to get used to.  Having achieved the lofty rank of Life Scout back in the days of boyhood, I decided to “Be Prepared”.  I remembered that the real expert in rain preparedness was probably Noah so I decided to build a sturdy craft, just in case.  I fired up my computer and went to “cubit” since the Bible wasn’t real specific about how big one was.  In the interest of educating or refreshing your memory, here’s what I found—a cubit is the length of your arm from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger.  Actually it was the King’s arm that was used so the measurement would be somewhat standardized.  This still left the possibility for a large variance depending on the size of the King.  Suppose the King was a pro basketball player, that would be a big cubit, if he was crowned at the age of three, that would be a little cubit.  If, like Noah, you were using cubits to build a boat, this variance could have your end result range in size from an aircraft carrier to a canoe.  I decided to use the size of the Queen’s arm since there were no kings available.  She was off at work and anyways she has a hard time understanding my need for unusual data at times.  I measure one of her blouses from the elbow to the cuff and added six inches and figured that that would be close enough.  With the needed dimensions in hand, next came rounding up the needed materials to build the boat.  Telly, my faithful canine companion suggested making a boat out of recycled materials.  We checked out the recycling bin but constructing a usable craft out of an empty wine bottle, five tuna fish cans, two butter containers, a ball of aluminum foil and a couple Chinese take out containers just didn’t seem feasible.  We decided we didn’t really need a boat since  I’m a pretty good swimmer so we decided to wait it out so we went out and sat on the porch and watched it rain.  We watched some mallards and a couple of Canada geese swimming around the bird feeder and snacking on the seeds that were floating there.  Telly decided that he heard nature’s call and needed to take a walk.  I put on my life vest and strapped Telly’s on him, we splashed our way to the nearest bush.  He tried to lift his leg in his customary fashion but kept floating away from his target.  I told him that it was OK, that he could pee in the pool we were standing in.  This solved the problem and we slogged our way back to the porch where we decided to sit and wait until next Wednesday.  Next Wednesday is the one day the weatherman had a little sun pasted on his chart.  We sat and watched the rain fall and agreed that climate change was a terrible problem.

Thought for the week—Talk is cheap—except when Congress does it.

Until next week, may you and yours be happy and well.

Whittle12124@yahoo.com