Back to Black
When degrees Fahrenheit and Celsius are almost the same, bed is the only place to be.
It is very cold in Washington this winter. I figure it best to follow the lead of locals, in particular bears, so am hibernating. Other than when I broke my ankle in Wellington and took a while to figure out which way up to hold the crutches, I have never gone so long without leaving the house. In some US states, the temperature is deep into the minus-30s, which has the one blessing that at that point it is similar in Celsius as it is in Fahrenheit, so you no longer have to do the difficult conversion in your head as you freeze.
It has not been quite that cold here in Maryland, although on the first day of school for the year it was -12°C, or –19°C with the wind chill factored in. I know this because I checked it on my phone in bed, while pulling the blankets up further and going back to sleep.
Luckily for my daughter, my husband is a kinder parent: he drove her to school, saving her the usual five-minute walk, which in the circumstances could have turned her to ice. By the time she walked home, the temperature had soared to -6°C.
In autumn, squirrels chewed through the hose on our barbecue, as they did last year. It was annoying at the time, but now I’m feeling so sorry for them trying to survive the cold that I’m considering buying them a bag of nuts and a couple of metres of PVC piping to see them through to spring.
A couple of days ago, I saw a fox in our back yard. I presume hunger is bringing wild animals closer to houses. I wonder if our squirrels, with their liking for hose pipes, taste of PVC? The scene in the backyard reminds me of animal documentaries I watched as a child, always feeling sorry for whichever animal was hungry, until it caught something to eat, when I would swap sides and pity its dinner. Winter is brutal in more ways than one.
The US has said it will slash its contributions to the United Nations this year by US$285 million. The UN funding formula is complex and based on a country’s share of global “gross national income”. As the biggest economy, the US is also the biggest contributor, providing 22% – about US$1.2 billion – of the institution’s operating budget.
The announced cut has been perceived as retaliation for the UN not supporting the US’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and as a sign of the US pulling back from its international engagement. But depending on how any cut is applied, it may be far from the worst thing to happen to the
UN, whose work is undermined by its fat bureaucracy and political correctness.
The website for the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, for example, features a “List of Human Rights Issues” including the appointment of the first “Independent Expert on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism”.
The most recent statement from this High Commissioner is over concerns about Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is, like Nigeria, a member of the UN’s Human
Rights Council, but maybe the memo did not get through. If the UN needs to cut its budget, scrapping the Human Rights Council would be a good place to start, not because human rights do not matter but because they matter too much to be left to the United Nations.
Other than when I broke my ankle, I have never gone so long without leaving the house.