“God created Arrakis to train the faithful.” — Frank Herbert, Dune
Setting aside whatever became of that sprawling epic, the weather here has had me thinking about what people are willing to take, or what people just end up enduring, like frogs in simmering bathtubs.
If you had asked me, when I was growing up, whether I wanted to live in a place where it was 99°F in the summer on a regular basis, I would first have thought that you were asking if I wanted to live somewhere along the equator, and then thought you were crazy. Civilization, in my view, should exist at around 75-79°F, a really hot day should be in the 80s, and a few times during the winter [which should basically be 30°F from late November to early March, with a few days of 50°F in February just to throw everybody off] we should dip down into single digits.
But here I am, in a town going through another heat advisory, rogue tropical invaders waiting outside the back door waiting to steal my blood…. It’s not the tropics; it’s not equatorial anything — it’s not even picking ripe avocados in my grandmother’s garden! It’s just another fetid summer day in Elsinore.
Yes, I know. Elsinore is named after Denmark’s Helsingør, famous for the quality of its court intrigues.
It would be cooler there. The winters would be long, and I don’t speak Danish. But on days like today, learning a new language seems less of a burden than stepping outside.
Let’s look at some ice:
Rethorykal Questions 