The Similkameen News Leader
Editorial
EVEN JUST FOR A MOMENT
EDITORIAL - December 5, 2006
The 'cold snap' last week was a good thing as far as we're concerned.
It made us aware of at least two things.
One, there is something about the traditional Canadian pastime of talking about the weather that takes your mind off of other things and,
Two, so much for global warming.
We've heard so many people in our office this past week say it was minus 20-something or better at their home that we forgot all about the best use of mercury - in a thermometer.
And you could bet just about everyone in the Similkameen Valley paid a whole lot more attention to the little glass vial of mercury in their $2.00 thermometer than has been focused on
'that other mercury issue' for a long time.
John Tapics probably had no idea how much good a cold snap could do. It kept a lot of people off the streets and huddled indoors next to cranked up heaters or wood stoves and away from his pet project.
It forced a lot of us to come to grips with the fact that Winter is really here and maybe it's time to change the tires or hunt for winter boots in the shed or buy a new snow brush.
It's funny how a change in the weather changes so much of what we do and interrupts things we were already doing.
For a while we even heard conversations move away from current issues and slowly slip into speculation on how much more of this weather could we stand.
As if any of us had a choice.
But that's how it goes with the first real blast of Winter. Even though we all know it's coming, we just don't want to deal with it.
Then conversations morphed into bets on how many days the cold snap would last and even if it was for a week or so, it still wasn't long enough to kill off those little pine beetles.
For a change it was nice to hear people talk about their holiday plans, their Christmas shopping ideas and about planning a ski trip.
It was not much fun driving in near white out conditions in places on highways in and around the region, but it did keep our minds occupied on something other than we've been so focused on in recent months.
It was a nice change.
