Beautiful Weather, Rachel McAdams, and Barack Obama

We've had a run of sunny, dry (not humid) days: cloudless blue skies and clear air such that you can see the features of the terrain from a distance without the blue haze we are accustomed to in these parts.

I remember a letter from one brother's friend (who was a gun-totin' cowboy in Arizona -- an editor for some kind of NRA organ) in which he said that the summer weather here was "sticky, foggy..." (He'd been born and raised here and loved to lord it over us Easterners that he'd escaped from. Hoosiers transplanted to Arizona can be obnoxious.)

I think that was before my family and I moved to the West (Utah) for an eight-year sojourn where it was usually not sticky or foggy. I remember the time I was amazed when it started to rain there, complete with lightning and thunder, amazed because the air seemed so dry. I remarked to myself that the air between the raindrops was dry.

And I loved the dry air. It was marvelous. When the air is not saturated with water vapor, it can dry the sweat on you more quickly than wet air can. Sweat drying on your skin cools your body. One summer I worked in a junkyard and the temperature reached 95 one day. When somebody told me I said, "Really?" When the air is not so humid it heats up in the sun but is markedly cooler in the shade and especially at night. Our kids were sleeping in winter pajamas in June, I noted.

If Indiana had not been sticky and foggy as it is, as a rule, we might have been overrun by transplanted Arizonans and Utahans here. Indiana could be Californicated -- what the Oregonians don't want. We are infested, to a small degree. People come to Indiana and particularly to bucolic little towns like Madison as "urban refugees." Even the Hoosier capital, Nap Town, has freeways in and around it that are easy to travel on in contrast with the likes of the Santa Ana Freeway. In recent years the immigrants have been able to live luxuriously here because of the difference in real estate prices, trading a modest ranch somewhere for a "historic" house on tree-lined streets here.

I concluded long ago that Indiana, especially rural southern Indiana, is a kinder, gentler place to live. When we came back here from Utah several people said, "Welcome back to God's country." I don't know about that, but I recall that I liked some things: we didn't have a sales tax on food; righteous people drank coffee and thought nothing of it; and although a lot of people thought their religion was the one true one, their belief was contested by others (who of course thought their religion as the true one) and, most important, it did not have the force of law. And a lot of us liked David Letterman, worldly and irreverent as he was, because he was, like us, a Hoosier. It was a good life, and we soon enough acclimated once again to the humidity. And, the first summer back, the fleas! At least Amanda and I did (!) -- poor old Sophie, our dog, suffered terribly. And people here, I concluded were friendlier and not just plain mean, as too many of them are out West.

Saw a thriller the other night, Red Eye, starring Rachel McAdams. I hope I'm not being a spoiler by saying that the thing I liked about it best is that Rachel turns out not to be too big a wuss in dealing with the villain.

I'm reading The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama. As you know, Senator Obama is running for president. At first I thought that wasn't a good idea because he has so little experience. I thought he should wait until he is more seasoned. But why? Being "unqualified" didn't stop a number of people. It certainly didn't stop the commander guy who a little over half of us glibly reelected even though the disaster under his command had already happened.

Anyhow, I'm learning from the book, because this guy knows what is going on and has a way of communicating it so that reading him, I think I know what is going on a little better. I'll vote for him if he's nominated. I trust him. As it stands right now, I wish we could have a triumvirate consisting of Barack, Hillary, and John Edwards. I think all three of them are presidential material. Compare these top three on the Democratic side to the top three contenders on the Republican side: Giuliani (give me a break!), Mitt Romney ("I think we should double Guantanamo"), and John McCain the Iraq shopper. But you never know what you're getting until the inauguration and the first days of celebration are over: every time we elect a president it's like buying a pig in a poke.

Anyhow, I like Barack. From his knowledge, intelligence, and ability to communicate, I think he would make a good president. So be it.