You Bet Your Ass There's Global Warming

There’s this guy I love to fight with because while MY politics are based on rationality and the highest impulses ha-ha, his are based on fear and hysteria. One time when he got all worked up talking to me about the environment he shouted “But it’s ALL fake don’t you see? There IS no Wobal Glorming!”

Well you’d best believe there sure as heck IS ‘Wobal Glorming’ with these extremes of weather we’ve been having and if I didn’t see that the other night when the outside came IN I sure know it now: One columnist friend from Arkansas has been without power and telephone for six days and another from Kentucky has been living in his car for a week, both on account of outages due to the bitter cold. Even in South Beach FLORIDA where I was on Saturday, temps were just in the low 40s with a 20 mile-an-hour wind. (It was amazing! Finely turned-out young men were blowing clear over! High school girls in belly shirts were screaming and clutching at their hairdos!  I sat on the cozy bed of a hotel room hanging just above Ocean Street and watched it all.)

Then at 3:00 that same day I boarded a cruise ship.

They have that special drill at the start of any cruise where you have to assemble at your Muster Station by the lifeboat that will carry you to safety should the worst occur. Dozens of us were crushing together by the exit when without looking, a big lady in front if me THREW her arm back, lassoed the long belt of MY lifejacket and bucked it tightly to her own.

When she turned and saw what she’d done she burst out laughing.

“If you jump I jump!” I said, channeling Leonardo and Kate Winslett from the ever-compelling Titanic.

“We’re all goin’ down together!” she said - and if that isn’t THE metaphor for our times I don’t know what is.

But oops I gotta run now. They got them Frozen Mojitos on Deck Five and after that there are some deck chairs that need rearranging.