Time for this ’n that

Nothing big happening, so it’s time for a little this ’n that.

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I see that the Summer Reading Program has kicked off at the Forrest City Public Library. I like this, because it brings back pleasant memories. It was a similar program that got me interested in one of my my favorite types of fiction.

We also had a summer reading program, in which one could order books that were delivered to your home during the summer. I remember a book about heroes, and also “The Highly Trained Dogs of Professor Petit” by Carol Ryrie Brink. But my absolute all time favorite was a book called “Half Magic,” By Edward Eager. It’s a fantasy about a girl who finds a magic coin that is so worn out it can only deliver half a wish, so she and her siblings have to figure out how to use it. It’s tremendous fun, and I was pleased to discover that it’s still around today.

I credit that book with instilling a love of fantasy fiction, which has led to things like “Lord of the Rings,” “The Narnia Chronicles,” “Harry Potter” and “Dune.” I would also include some works by Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, because they often seem to touch on fantasy. And frankly, I don’t care if certain religious types object to fantasy.

That genre is not the only type of book I read, but it’s one I enjoy more than most others. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve read “Lord of the Rings.” And I think J.K. Rowling should get a special award for inspiring a generation of young people to read, with the Harry Potter series – books that are perfectly readable by adults as well (and also much more detailed than the movies could ever be).

Anything that will instill a love of reading in young folks, I’m all for it.

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I am composing this column on Tuesday, which happens to be June 29, and I got a reminder of something that happened on June 29, seven years ago. Maybe some readers remember as well. You might say it was a wash-out.

It was a Sunday morning, and I awoke to some of the hardest rain I had ever heard this side of the Pacific. I looked outside, and the street was flooded, and water was pouring between our house and the house next door. The back yard was practically swimming. I don’t mean puddles, I mean standing water – or it would have been standing if it hadn’t been moving so fast.

As it turned out, my neighborhood was fairly lucky. The water never got up to the houses (that I could see) and the drainage was good enough that when the rain slacked off (another lucky break), the water ran off. I remember that not everyone was as fortunate. But even in my lucky neighborhood, for a while, it rained so hard that even a good drainage system wasn’t good enough to handle it.

I remember that day as I sit here on Tuesday, with the heat index outside feeling like it’s over 100 degrees and no rain in sight for today. It may rain Wednesday and/or Thursday. We’ll see. By the time this is read, we’ll know.

Like most people, I don’t care much for weather extremes, which we seem to be experiencing more and more. Part of the country is overheating while part is flooding.

Is there such a thing as climate change? Of course there is. Climates have changed in the past without human help. Climates no doubt will continue to change. Are we contributing to it now? Possibly. The thing is, whatever the climate does, the human race will have to adjust to it. There’s nowhere else to go. Not yet, and probably not for a long time.

I do believe this: Worse by far than weather extremes are the political extremes. Somewhere, between the hysterical extreme of running around like Chicken Little, and the anti-science extreme of dismissing it all like a bunch of quackery, folks with actual working minds are going to have to come up with something. Or several somethings. Maybe they are. I’m not quite ready to give up just yet.

•••••

That building collapse in Florida may end up getting some laws changed, and maybe some people losing their jobs, and even some people going to jail.

In the meantime, as of this writing, there are still more than 100 people unaccounted for.

No doubt in the long run, this is going to end up in the hands of lawyers, and I can’t say that’s a bad thing, because that collapse is something that never should have happened. There were warnings. There need to be consequences.

Let’s just remember that those are humans under the wreckage, and not just numbers.