Hammer Mill Days

Hey, why wouldn't I want to explain our podcast? You think it speaks for itself? It's only a little podcast; it needs someone to run interference. Not so hard to understand. Did you listen to this month's podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, the May 2013 episode ? I'll take that as a no. Still, you might be missing out on something extra ... well ... strange. Wouldn't want to be the only one who didn't partake, right? This was a relatively lively episode, full of bright sallies of wit and infinite jest. Here are some highlights (and no, I don't mean the magazine most often perused in dental office waiting rooms): NED TREK X: A PLEA FOR ARMS - Our latest installment of our increasingly possible podcast dramatic series, Ned Trek, featuring Captain Willard Mittilius Romney, commander of the starship Free Enterprise, and his talking dressage horse / first officer Mr. Ned. This time out, Willard leads a landing party back to one of the outerspace backwaters he attem...

We'll be in the nineties again tomorrow. A couple of days ago, we had a tornado in upstate New York. Again. Lots of trees and limbs down, again. Flooding again. A tree crashed through my cousin's roof and into his family room. The rain came down in sheets - literally a white-out out my back window. This is not the first really big storm we've had this season. And summer isn't even here yet. Now, I'm not complaining. Upstate is nothing like Moore, Oklahoma, not by a long shot. But there can be no doubt that the weather here and everywhere else in the country is getting more severe. There is far more energy behind some of these storms than is normal. It takes a few mornings of driving through wreckage to drive home the notion that this may be the new normal. This may be the best we can expect in the years ahead. That is a disastrous prospect. I have to think that, after there have been more Super Storm Sandies, more Moore-sized tornadoes, we will not take note of...