Not Quite "Christmas in July"

We are enjoying a lovely bout of October weather here at the end of July. It's not quite a "Christmas in July" but I'll take it. I think it's pretty darned nice!

I'm not quite sure what the technical situation is . The weathermen on the TV have been talking about "record high lows" and "record low highs". All of this makes sense to me while they are explaining it, with little charts and diagrams onscreen, but my understanding disappears with the charts. Somehow, I don't think a record high low is a record low. That would be a low low, to be a new record.
Am I wrong about that?

I am surprised at their surprise. For the last several years, the weather seems to have shifted somewhat. Spring blooms earlier, summer dies off earlier. The key is not in the calendar, but in the wildlife. We've had daffodils in February, redbuds at the end of March, black-eyed Susans and Tiger lilies in July. Daffodils used to be "Easter lilies" to us as children, the redbuds are more familiar in mid to late April, and the susies and tigers should only now be coming into full growth. Both of these are part of the transition to September.

September and October should be foxtails and goldenrod and grass (hay) drying in the fields. The last few years, we have had the goldenrod before school starts in mid-August. This year it looks as if the same thing will happen. We'll see the first snowflakes in late October or early November. The "January thaw" will be near Christmas.

But, NO.
Not necessarily.
Here I am, doing the same thing as the weathermen and meteorologists -- trying to put Mother Nature and her business into neat little cubicles (dates on a calendar.)

When will we learn that nothing not man-made fits into our neat little boxes?
Just because it's usually gold and orange in September doesn't mean it always will be so.
Just because it has always snowed in February doesn't mean we can't have sunshine and warm southern breezes that month.

There are plenty of people ready to blame man-made sources for the changes in the weather. Plenty of them, but their 'proof'' is that the weather has changed. That really doesn't prove the why.

Weather has never been constant according to Modern Man's demands. The constancy is vague and steady,  seasonal; not date-to-date, not month-to-month. Weather just won't fit our convenience.

Maybe the solution to our (not a) problem will end up being the time-honored tradition of updating the calendar. That is what our species has done historically when the seasons and the dates have become out of sync.



I say let's keep our calendars loose and flexible, and let us not bind ourselves too closely to what our little blank calendar boxes and our record books say we should expect from the weather. Because, no matter how many blacks we draw for time and nature, these things will not co-operate with the corporate mentality.

Above all, though,  let us enjoy  this October weather in July. 

Food for Thinking

My new grandson is approaching the 4 month mark. He is also drooling, pushing the nipple around with his tongue, stuffing anything into his mouth, and seeming unsatisfied with just his milk.

In a less enlightened age, these would have been seen as signs that he's ready to try solids.
Nowadays, the doctors usually will not recommend feeding until six months of age, unless weight loss starts to 'trend' in the child. A calendar and a magic number are, of course, more rational guidelines than individual development. They are a better indicator than common sense that says if the baby is getting hungry, try feeding him.

I have an objection to the recommended feedings, too. Back in the dark ages, when I was growing up and helping with an endless stream of younger siblings, the first things we offered were fruits.
Now, historically, or maybe I mean evolutionarily, this makes sense. Humans started out as hunter-gatherers, and when our babies were ready to start solids, over ripe fruit was probably the softest thing available for gathering.. Thus, babies would start eating with fruits, and that practice remained at least to the 1970s.

Now, they want parents to start the infants on cereals -- grains. A food that, even at its purest, has to be ground and/or milled before it can be prepared for a toothless mostly sucking infant.
This just doesn't fit the needs of a hunter-gatherer society. Prepared foods would come a little later, logically.

Now, before someone tells me about the delicate process of sensitizing (or not) the baby's delicate digestive process, I'd like to offer a couple arguments.

1) gluten intolerance
2) celiac disease.

We didn't have these  runaway rampant allergy/digestive problems back in the days when we fed our infants by using common sense and instinctive traditions, did we?
Yes, there were some; proportionately, not as many.

Babies with delicate systems largely did not survive. It's good that we can now compensate, sometimes, for these problems, but maybe we should take a serious look at how they are started. Somewhere there should be alarm bells ringing that we are creating the problem by circumventing the evolutionary process.

Many people point at processed foods. Well, that well may be part of the problem, but is it the start of the problem? Maybe someone needs to investigate the possibilities that mothers have for eons been right and the scientists, in just a few decades, have created problems with their charts and calendars and thinking that "how it should be" is "how it is."

Those of us who have fed children out in the real world know that they don't live, grow, or thrive under laboratory conditions.
Ever.