By Shannon Williams
Remember this past winter, when we all said we would never complain about the heat in the summer, well I LIED!!!! I love the seasons and how they change, but does it really have to be that big of a change and so early in the summer? While we did not freeze to death during the great winter cold, it was way too cold for me. I love Spring and Fall; the weather is the best and it is so nice to be outside and enjoying the day. But the summer and winter are just getting a little carried away.

I have said more than once during the past year or so that someone has made Mother Nature mad! If you look at Mother Nature, it is a way of personifying nature and referring to nature as a Mother because nature is life-giving like a mother. With that being said, I know better than to make my mother mad; even at 92, she gets my attention. As a child and an adult, I try to please my mother, but how do we please Mother Nature and get her to be nicer to us? I can sit on both sides of the fence on global warming and its effect, but it is without a doubt the weather is more of a factor in our life than I ever recall it being. I oversee projects from Pittsburgh to Portland and in between, so I am always dealing with some sort of weather incident; it is either the rain in South Texas, the winds in West Texas or the snow in Pittsburgh. Poor Portland got an awful snow storm this year and then the record breaking heat; and Kansas City just gets it all, ice, snow, and heat. We do our best to prepare as we do here but sometimes it just gets to you.

On the northern West Coast, many of the apartment complexes do not have air conditioning as it is really not needed, but I think those days are over. We had a slumber party in our lobby to help our seniors have a cool place to sleep!! We have been doing research as we try and decided if we can spend the money to put air conditioning in all of the units we have in that area. In the past, they had 5-7 days a year of over 90 degrees, and now they say they will have 20 to 30 days that are over 90! There are so many different theories on why the weather is getting more severe in so many areas. I tend to think that this has been a pattern for 1000 of years, but since we really only began to keep records in the past several hundred years we don’t know. Also, there has to be some reaction to all the people on this planet and all of the things we use; every action has a reaction. I think we are all going to have to work at getting Mother Nature back in our corner, but how do we do that? Lessening our footprint by picking up trash, trying to use less of things that don’t disappear easier and doing our best to leave the outdoors better than we found it. I know that we have worked to prepare for what is thrown at us, we have a generator, and I have started my hurricane stock up. I try to prepare for the hot ride on the ferry and cover myself to keep from being eaten alive by mosquitos, but it seems more and more each year that weather determines more of how our days will be than it ever did before. I feel this will be a way of life from now one and we must prepare, but I am still not going to say that I wont gripe about the weather when I don’t like it, as it seems griping about the weather is a major pastime these days. Stay cool.

[July-13-2021]