Old Tractor in the Fencerow

Graphic from Airnow.gov website showing the air on this day last summer. Though we have had fewer smoky days here this year than last (so far) it is a reality that has become the new normal in the past few years. To paraphrase Dostoyevsky and Victor Frankl: people can get used to anything as being normal. The new normal is that I check the heat index and the smoke map every day and plan everyday activities around things that only a few years ago were not normal. The "shifting baseline" phenomenon means it is easy to adjust, move on, and forget how things were just a few years ago. The disaster-filled news, instead of spurring action, seems to spur either an apathy that just adjusts, sighs, and moves on, or a doubling down that ignores reality, like the evils of windmills. Most of us are just adjusting to the new normal while our leaders dish out daily absurdity that has nothing to do with facing reality. Most of us are stuck in a system that we can do little to get out of wit...