It’s hot as Hades in Tennessee

Yesterday at 1:30 returning from the pool, the thermometer made it to a hundred. There was no consolation that humidity was low. You could fry an egg on the sidewalk, but who would do that when a dozen eggs are pushing two dollars a dozen?
So, today, I was happy to stay in and find out what the rest of the country was going through. It occurred to me that the last two weeks of August are supposed to be lagtime for most everyone who has labored hard. With the President and Congress out, I could perhaps find some worthwhile news. The weather trumped politics. Did the North Koreans ever get outside help after their big flood? Texas’ hurricane season loomed. In midAmerica 40 deaths were attributed to the heat. Sometimes it’s hard to concentrate on the orneriness of politics.
Whammo! The auxiliary generator kicked in and the CRTs went black. Maryville’s electric service feeds from TVA’s wholesale supply. They’re stressed, but nothing like brownouts and rationing we had in the 80s. I read where TVA had to shut down one reactor’s output, because the cooling water from the Tennessee River was above maximum allowable temperature.
Sometimes it’s nice to have print newspapers. In culling out a whole section of high school football machismo and the latest angst over stock markets, I lit on the Nation/World page of The Daily Times.
BUSH TURNS TO EXECUTIVE ACTION TO ACCOMPLISH HIS AGENDA, (enough for a full column) written by Deb Reichmann of the AP, was datelined Crawford, Texas. Not newsworthy if one has been following almost eight years of Shrubbery, but mind jarring if one has followed our Times and “our President” for that long.
Fortunately, whatever was wrong with the electricity was short lived and I could get to refdesk.com and start finding out which online papers picked up the feed. Our paper didn’t, nor did I think it would use that much space. The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, who had several heat-related casualties, carried 15 AP stories but nothing from Crawford. The Knoxville News-Sentinel carried the Mueller testimony in response to the Comey testimony, but nothing on Crawford. Our much beloved Tennessean in Nashville didn’t either. But I found out Lamar Alexander has two Democrats interested in his Senate seat. One is former governor McWhorter’s son and the other is Bob Tuke, who served as head of the Tennessee Democratic party.
I have a theory that local political attitudes are pretty well reflected in the AP articles the local newspapers pick up. I’ve noticed over the years how little articles get attention more often than long ones. Was it because our paper lacked copy and needed more filler? They might know and I will not speculate. I quote the opening paragraph of the report, however:
The door is closing rapidly on President Bush’s opportunity to shape domestic policy. End quote.
This is not an opinion piece on executive orders, regulation re-writes and signing letters. It is simply to share that articles about so-called waning days are permissible in a part of the country usually associated with NASCAR and the NRA. “Door is closing” is a nice thing to see from where I sit.
By the way, I would have supplied a link to the AP story if it had been easily available. I surmised that the AP date would have been earlier than today’s August 17. A large newspaper, richer in human reportage, would probably not have used the feed in its online paper. But good old New York Times gives a lot of information if you ask them. So I asked them for references to AP reports and read headings for the 17th and 16th, all 600 of them. It wasn’t there. I’ll wait to see what develops over the next couple of weeks. I wonder what is cooking on the sidewalks in Crawford. In the meantime, I best get back to blogging.

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