Nothing too exciting has happened for the last couple of days. Yesterday I worked on campus and walked with my colleague, even though it was so hot. We stuck to the shade, and I took the bus back up the hill instead of walking up it. Today was even hotter; I worked from home and walked with my neighbor in the morning, but then we stayed inside the rest of the day. I was supposed to go on an architectural tour of State Street, but it was canceled due to the heat. Tomorrow is supposed to be just normal summer hot, so I'm looking forward to that.
I recently read that 90% of the global warming in this country is caused by the richest 10% of people. That makes sense - those rednecks who look down on environmentalists aren't actually causing the problems, the people jetting off to Davos to decide how to tell the rest of us how to live more "green" are. A lot of it is also investment in fossil fuels, which is generally done by rich people. Those rednecks aren't investing any money they might happen to have left after buying what they need to survive at the Walmart where they work part-time after it put everything else in town out of business. (I've seen this firsthand in rural Iowa, and it's harsh.) Just now I was looking at MyFace, and there was an ad about how to quit your union. Who do you suppose is sponsoring that? I'm going to guess rich people who want even more money by being able to pay their non-unionized workers even less in wages and benefits. These same people are behind a news channel that convinces the non-unionized, Walmart workers that the reason they're struggling is brown people, not rich people who are screwing them over. Because if the poor white people and the poor brown people ever got together and rose up against their oppressors, it would be Game Over for these evil rich people, and they know it, so they turn everyone else against each other. I wish all of us little people could see that we have more in common than we realize, and that it's time to ask for our fair share. People should be paid a living wage. After all, withholding the just wages from the laborer is one of the sins that cries to Heaven for vengeance.
I used to be very hardcore about protecting the environment myself, biking or bussing everywhere. Now I'm older and a bit lazier, plus I live further from work, so I kind of need to drive a bit. Still, I am very aware of my actions on the environment and always try to choose the least harmful action. For this I can thank Ma Hat, who has always cared about nature and instilled a great love of it in me. She says she remembers fondly how, as a child, I would take walks with her in the rain and go around saving all the worms from drowning. I'm not quite as tenderhearted these days, but maybe almost. I generally relocate bugs that are in the house instead of killing them. And I hate turning on the air conditioning unless it's really necessary... like today. Hopefully tomorrow we can turn it back off.
Famous Hat
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