Cold Front

It rained on and off Saturday morning, with rolling thunder for accompaniment, and scattered sunny intervals to remind us that rain doesn't persist into drizzle on a normal rainy day in the Keys.It was a weather event that marks the transition in the keys from summer to winter, from the hot and humid season to the cool and dry winter. Rainy season is in the summer, and winter rains are usually brief, well defined, and predictable because the downpour precedes the arrival of the cold front from the north. In winter the days are usually sun and warm 80 degrees/30C is warm in winter by most standards. Then before the arrival of a cold front the weather gets muggy and close and everyone walks around sweating and complaining. The winds go to the south, and then the west and then the north-west or north, clocking round till the big black clouds arrive and pound down some rain and wind and blow quickly away.
Then the winds revert to their winter norm of north east first for a few bright sparkling sunny days and then Southeast before the cycle starts again. This is the first well defined cold front of the Fall and pretty soon swimming in the ocean will be an activity reserved to polar bears from Up North as water temperatures will drop to their winter averages well below 80 degrees. A lot of people have been looking forward to this transition thanks to an unusually long hot summer with temperatures well above the norm. Me? I am glad I live someplace where I don't dread the onset of winter anymore, no more long gray drizzly days with mud and lashings of frost. Cool, dry and sparkling sun is quite bearable in the long run. The rain has caused me to reflect on a few things. We went to see Michael Moore's new film when it arrived at the Tropic Cinema Friday night, and as usual I learned a few things and had my prejudices reinforced. My wife told me over dinner about one of her kid's single mothers who lost eight hours of work at her Dion's store and is desperately looking for work to make up the difference and can't find any. Which was one of the themes of Moore's movie, the dictatorship of the workplace, where it's easy to dump workers to keep profits rising. I got out of retail when i discovered that managers are paid in proportion to the profits they make, creating a store that operates in minimal, high stress staffing levels so the boss gets a bonus from the owner. And people rag on me for working for the government.
The designation of US Highway One as an All-American Highway seems like another empty gesture, and it's got the tourism people hopping up and down as though now visitors will notice one an unusual road the Overseas Highway really is. I must say the voices I've heard from Congress demanding a public option in the health care debate seem to be pretty loud this time around so I'm hoping they aren't an empty gesture. I go back to the start of the economic crisis and continue to wonder why Congress didn't spend $12 trillion to pay off every mortgage in the country instead of spending $13 trillion to bail out the banks that are back at their shenanigans again! Especially in light of the platitudes expressed about consumers being the engine of the economy. Oh and, what happened to the notion of regulating these banksters? And I've heard that in Illinois vehicle registrations have gone up $30 a year (they doubled in Florida). Now that is something to cause any red blooded taxpayer to get mad at the government! Don't bother getting mad at the privately run banks and insurance and chemical monopolies and their taxpayer subsidies! It's easier to rag on about the President's birth certificate.

Well, at least I don't have to hock my testicles to buy heating oil this winter.