So Long Summer

    Now that the weather has turned I will move inside and try to do some blogging. I will start with something about summer which just disappeared. I am a fan of summer and hated to see it go. I dread the cold and dreary days to come. Most people around here do not agree with me and are eagerly awaiting the first snow. Perhaps I can use this post to attempt to understand why the winter lovers are now so happy and convince myself that summer is the bad season.

The Humidex

   I will not devote much time to this relatively new meteorological measure; I discussed it in my post about The Human Suffering Index. The haters of summer, it seems to me, tend to agree with the TV weather people when they say that we should stay inside because the temperature is 22, BUT it feels like 40. "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." I tend to prefer a high humidity to a high wind chill, but next summer I will wear sweatshirts and flannel Bermies in order to better empathize with those who are suffering through the summer season.

The Sun

   I am old so I tend to look forward to sunny skies, but I understand that now the sun is a bad thing. I am not sure about the status of Vitamin D.  I was misled in my youth by ads such as these, but being old I will not attempt to launch a class action law suit against the advertisers.

Next summer I will stay inside and stare at this cartoon so I am reminded of the dangers outdoors.

Mosquitos

I grew up along the mosquito-infested mid-Atlantic coast, where we boasted that they were as big as Piper Cubs. Having mosquito bites was like having sand in your shorts - small prices to pay for having cold beers on hot beaches. And we had fairly effective ways of dealing with the bugs and even had some fun doing so. On our bikes we would chase after the trucks spraying insecticides. When such solutions were delivered by aircraft in the Florida Keys, we could feel the spray when it landed on our heavily tanned skin. I will not launch a class action suit against the chemical companies because I am old enough to feel like I bear some responsibility for my actions. As well, it would set a precedent that my sons might follow and sue me for letting them cruise around shirtless in the Florida sunshine without life preservers. While there have been no melanomas as far as I know, they may at some point feel the pangs of PTSD because of the potential for melanomas and because of the swimming and boating experiences they endured - as well as the high Humidex.

Back then, only malaria was a concern and insecticides were not. Now we know that mosquitoes also are responsible for Zika, West Nile and Lyme Disease and that we probably should not have welcomed the showers of mosquito spray. I am still dreading the coming of winter, but I will spend part of it reading this new book by Canadian historian Timothy Winegard: The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator. Apparently, "The general consensus of demographers is that about 108 billion human beings have ever lived, and that mosquito-borne diseases have killed close to half—52 billion people, the majority of them young children. While only 830,000 people were killed last year by mosquito bites, it is likely that they were bitten during the warm weather.

I will try to enjoy winter more, but will likely not enjoy summer less. There is just about as much of a likelihood of me avoiding the bright sunshine as there is of me achieving total sobriety.

Source:
  For a review of the Winegard book and the figure of 830,000 see: "The Mosquito Has Killed Millions and Changed Our DNA," Brian Bethune, Maclean's July 10, 2019.

The Sunblock cartoon is by Christopher Weyant and it is found in The New Yorker on July 5, 2020. I have a subscription and hope he won't mind.