It may surprise some of you to know that I read with interest the daily e-mail feed from the New York Times. The Times leans far left but it is one of the few publications left where grammar and punctuation remain relevant. The stories are beautifully written. You can tell the writers were forced to diagram sentences as was I. Their stories are also accompanied by top notch photography. I do get exasperated with the paper’s so-called ‘˜explainers’ in which the effete liberals on staff, who consider Central Park rural, get to lecture us on issues we heathens out in the country could have no concept of like climate change, forestry management on public lands, the godliness of Anthony Fauci, the glamour of Dr. Jill and how some new COVID variant will kill us all if we don’t wear at least two masks. Last week, these folks ‘˜explained’ that Chicago is well placed as a big city refuge from the threat of global warming. They wrote, ‘Chicago is far away from rising oceans and melting glaciers. It does not sit in the path of hurricanes, nor is it vulnerable to the rising number of forest fires in the American west.’ Long ago, I went to Chicago on business. It was January. I didn’t seem much like a refuge to me. I was worried about freezing to death. I never got warm on the entire trip even in my hotel room where I could control the temperature. I would have paid good money for some global warming. Never have I been so glad to leave a place than I was when my plane left O’Hare headed back to Atlanta. I would have to have a really good reason or be very well compensated to return to Chicago even in the summer. Chicago is, and long has been, a hotbed of crime. Al Capone and his Outfit were the Pope and his Council of Cardinals compared to the thugs who are remorselessly shooting up the city now without fear of apprehension or prosecution. Over the recent Independence Day weekend, over 100 people were shot and 19 of them killed. The victims included a police officer, two federal agents, a one-month old girl, two girls ages five and six, an 11-year-old boy and the list just keeps going and going. When the weekend had ended, Chicago had recorded 2,000 shootings for 2021. In that Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, I am awaiting the Times’ ‘˜explainer’ on this but I’m not holding my breath. I will just have to read about the history and legacy of the Westminster Dog Show instead. Were climate change to chase me to the Windy City, I would prefer to wear body armor and take a strike team along. I would ask Gen. James ‘˜Mad Dog’ Mattis to lead it. Mattis is famous for his fondness for gun play. ‘Be polite, be professional but have a plan to kill everyone you meet,’ Mattis once said. My all-star self defense team would also include Clint Eastwood, Chuck Norris, Doc Holliday, the Earp Brothers and Baby Face Nelson, his penchant for the Thompson submachine gun could perhaps even the odds. After all, Chicago is like the OK Corral every day. Yes, I realize most of these folks are dead and those who are not are past their prime (no offense Chuck). Yes, this is fantasy. But it is not so far-fetched as pitching Chicago as a place to take refuge from climate change or anything else for that matter.
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