75  bar falls 29.78  2mph  SSE dew-point 52  Summer, warm and sunny

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

These are the dog days, so called because the Romans believed that the bright Sirius, now in night sky, added its heat to the sun, magnifying Sol’s effect. (affect=verb, effect=noun most of the time.  I have trouble with this one.)

While in the dog days, thunder storms are welcome.  They drain the heat up into the atmosphere where it cools into clouds; rain drops form and, if they get heavy enough, fall to earth.  The whole process results in cooler near earth weather.  Like today.  Yesterday in the 90’s with a dewpoint in the high 70’s; today 75 with a dew-point in the 50’s.

During the dog days my gardening energy declines and I work on inside projects like the Twin Cities/Minnesota UU history I’m crafting right now.

It is so easy, to walk the aisle in an American grocery store.  So easy to take the abundance and its affordability for granted.  Those of us raised in the US since WWII have not known want, at least those of us in the working class and up economically.  Mercados take the place of grocery stores in much of the world.  We visit farmer’s markets for the quaint experience of buying food from those who grow or raise it.  Most of the world knows only that or their own garden, their small chicken coop.  A few still hunt and gather, yes, but most of the world has entered some form of economy based either on barter or cash.

Millions have no food to buy, no clean water to drink, no sanitation to stop disease, no medical services.  We have healthy water, food to put in a grocery cart, plumbing and doctors.  No, everyone does not have access to all of these, but at least here it is because the culture is too indolent or too callous; in other places the services themselves are simply not available.

It’s worth it, now and then, to pause in the aisle of your favorite grocery and say a prayer of thanks to mother earth and to the dumb luck that put you here.