Did you hear about the weather?

I hate to be the one always bellyachin' about the Good Old Days, but I need to know just when it was that this country became so doggone wimpified.

I'm talking about the panic that grips many of us when the weather forecast calls for the temperature to drop below 60°, or for rain to fall from the heavens, and God forbid that it should snow on us.

I don't happen to believe that the TV news sets the trends for this, but the people at the local TV stations and networks do research all the time to find out what people are thinking and how they react to things, and they are clearly getting information that almost all of us out here in "TV land" are scared to death to go outside in the rain or the cold or the snow.  What else to explain the rush to the grocery store when snow is in the offing?  (The Baltimoreans among us know the chant:  "Bread!  Milk!  Toilet Paper!") Why all the texting from person to person about how it might be GOING TO RAIN on Sunday evening and there goes the whole weekend! And what office water cooler hasn't been the site of conversations on the topic of the Polar Vortex, which no one outside of meteorology school had heard of before last winter, when the term rode into town in a brand new Dodge Derecho?

Just for the record, 45° is not all that cold. I'm fairly certain the Pilgrims we so adore made it through the early days of colonial America in temperatures below 45°, and they did it without furnaces and Ed E. Bauer Duck Down Clothing.  (In early America, "Duck down" was only used as good advice for when the Redcoats commenced shooting.) 

Rain deposits a good deal of the fresh water we get on this earth...like 99% of it. The other 1% comes courtesy of the guy down the street with his hose and sprinkler. We need rain, if only to wash away all the sidewalk chalk.

When it snows, the county comes along and plows it.  You can shovel your driveway, or hire a dude to plow it (ask me for the number of a great guy!) or simply wait until July, at which time the snow is gone.

With a little prudence and management, we can learn to stop complaining about the weather and go back to worrying about contracting Ebola.  You will notice that this country is now 100% Ebola free, thanks to people who know what they're doing, doing what they do so well.