August 3, 2006
Here’s a headline I never thought I’d read in my lifetime: With AC aplenty and low humidity, Arizona offers an escape from the U.S. heat wave. The front page article in this morning’s Arizona Republic goes on to say that yesterday’s 103 high in New York was actually 107 when you factor in the “heat index” and that Kansas City’s 99 degrees was actually 103, and here’s the punchline: Phoenix’s 102 high is actually 100 on the heat index. Would hot be as hot by any other name? Or, have we sliced our meanings so many ways, there is little ooomph left in anything? Uf-da.

“Great ideas, it is said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings; the gentle stirring of life and hope.”
—Albert Camus