JULY 31, 2025 – Partly by design but also by default, I’ve not read much lately that counts as news. Two, three times a day I scroll through a newsfeed, to see what’s happening, or more precisely, what’s being reported. As is so often the case, it’s what’s happening that we don’t hear or read about that will one day create the big splashy headline—a variation of the “but for a nail the shoe was lost, [etc.]” syndrome.
In any event, instead of trying to follow threads and themes in politics, the economy, business, science and technology, I’m “saving it up” for later review and examination. I’ve made a handful of notable exceptions, however, which I’ll get to in a moment.
Nearly 100% of my current reading time is devoted to books—thick ones—and they have so captured my interest and held my attention that I have to force myself to stop every once in a while to force myself off my lazy derriere. My excuse of “not feeling well,” no longer applies. A more legitimate excuse, though, to refrain from much demanding exercise is the smoke from the Canadian forest fires.
Yesterday, I heard a radio report that the air quality in vast swaths of the Upper Midwest were the “worst in the world.” I saw all too many runners and bikers who apparently had not received the memo. At an intersection, I observed one runner, a guy perhaps in his mid 20s, stopped, waiting for the light to change. His shirt was soaked with sweat as he he futzed with his watch, doubtless checking his workout stats. “Compulsive runner,” I thought. “Just can’t dial it back even for the worst air quality in the world.”
But I gave the guy some slack. When I was at his age and level of intensity about life, smoke-filled air wouldn’t have stopped or slowed me, either. Far more important to stick with my rigid training program than to worry about the long-term deleterious effects of inhaling a bunch of smoke with each breath. Only now that I’m old, of course, do I see the folly in that . . . old . . . “no pain, no gain” attitude, at least without proper hydration.
Speaking of which, one article I allowed myself recently, was a report on the drought in Iran. Life in Tehran, with a population of close to 10 million—close to 17 million, if you include the ‘burbs—has hit the skids when it comes to the essential commodity of water. It’s a dire emergency. Given the magnitude of the problem, this will have all sorts of painful and potentially disruptive consequences.
If oil was once liquid gold, water will soon supplant oil as the commodity over which nations will go to war. Yet, at the same time, the other bit of news I’ve allowed myself is about weather—in the form of extreme heat and . . . way too much water in the form of hard, inundating rains.
Then there’s another news item I read: the report of the Delta plane that got bounced by extreme turbulence over Wyoming about 45 minutes into a flight from Salt Lake City bound for Amsterdam. So many people aboard sustained significant injuries that the plane had to make an emergency stop at the Twin Cities, where an array of first-responders were on hand to treat, then ferry the injured to local hospitals.
A good friend and retired Delta captain posted today that when he started flying in the mid-1980s, an altitude of 37,000 feet provided clearance over most storms. “By the time I retired,” he wrote, “we would struggle to reach 40,000 feet only to have to zigzag around weather.” Then Captain Joe wrote ominously: “Two words . . . CLIMATE CHANGE.”
What will it take, I wonder, before we frogs start jumping out of the pot of water on the hot burner and into a pool of collective corrective action?
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
