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Honoring My Mother| Not so many happy returns

What goes up, must come down, spinning wheel’s got to go round… as the old song goes. Yesterday, I was hoping to read an expert’s view on the probable reason why we’re presently having quite a spell of scorching weather lately. This was what greeted me instead: double-speak, sugarcoating, and the usual game of runaround. 

For example, I chanced upon one NASA page comparing global warming and climate change. One had to read twice to get what they were driving at. 

For starters, it explained that the term weather is not the same as climate. Duh, that much was simple enough as an intro. Then, it continued that global warming ( as similarly espoused by Al Gore long ago) and climate change (now championed by Greta Thunberg) are not necessarily synonymous or the same. 

However, to compound it further, the causes for the two are the same, “… human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere.” For the everyman, why can’t these just so easily be explained as what goes up must come down? Or down-to-earth, even if one’s trying to be pun-ny.

At least in the general sense, we can say we blew it peeps. We’re the culprit. While others among us may still either place the blame on condensation or vapor trails in the wake of jets overhead or industrial smoke from factories and then car exhaust from our highways, in the end, everything still falls squarely on our laps. 

As part of the consequential fallout, the incidences of red tide and acid rain, plus other after-effects like flash floods, appear like tributaries stretching out in all directions emanating from their main vein, which is the ocean of our discontent.

What goes around, comes around. The fight against COVID-19, though constantly forewarned as not yet really over, is once again reintroduced as though it were a Netflix series exclusive: welcome to season two.

Until recently, even as casual chats from friends living abroad have made it clear to us that in their own localities overseas, the virus was still pretty much active, health officials (IATF) here have reported that until the end of the month, we will be resorting back to Level two because of the increase in cases of COVID-19 nationwide. 

The IATF has recommended this for 26 areas of the country from April 15 to 30. As such, it’s basically a return to the old restriction of 50 percent capacity in establishments indoors (for fully vaccinated adults) and 70 percent capacity outdoors. And it might as well spell for mask-wearing in crowded areas again. 

Already, our suburbia chat room is abuzz with complaints and some griping. Meanwhile, those who’ve suffered in the past just quietly read on. While they know wishing the same to befall these whiners and moaners isn’t a civilized thing, in the back of some minds, they might be thinking, what if it finally happened to them? Will that shut them up?

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