According  weather.com, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and a couple of other states are located within a Ring of Fire”. Perhaps the volcano activity in Hawaii has caused the folks at the weather website to make an analogy. It may be apt, but it is not a happy play on words for us in the new R of F zone.

I have been writing a lot about the weather lately; it may be my new obsession. I will just let it run its course, while the temperature heat-up does its thing. And, of course, I will be researching Indian Cool Down Dances, which are less-well known than the Rain Dance. (I will have to keep a careful for anyone with a cell phone video camera.) Caught on tape, my performance might by titled “Little Old Lady Crazy Dance.” It is a chance I will have to take.

I hope it is a slow dance, but maybe it will turn out to have echoes of Johnny Cash.

…EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING IN EFFECT FROM NOON EDT /11 AM CDT/ TODAY TO 8 PM EDT /7 PM CDT/ SUNDAY… The National Weather Service in Northern Indiana has issued an Excessive Heat Warning…which is in effect from noon EDT /11 AM CDT/ today to 8 PM EDT /7 PM CDT/ Sunday. The Excessive Heat Watch is no longer in effect. HAZARDOUS WEATHER… * Long duration extreme heat event. Temperatures will peak into the lower to middle 90s today and Sunday, with middle to upper 90s on Saturday. Heat indices will reach near 105 today and Sunday, around 110 on Saturday. * Humid with low temperatures in the middle 70s tonight and Saturday night. IMPACTS… * The combination of hot temperatures and high humidity will lead to an increased risk of heat related stress and illness.

Last January, I believe the temperature went down to way below zero and I typed that we were all going to freeze and I would probably rue those words come summer. I am RUE-ing, big time.  There may be a hot time in the ole town tonight, but this is one party I would be glad to miss. Two days ago the high was in the low 70’s; today when I left to go to the store, it was 90 degrees and “felt like 95” and I quote weather.com.

I know that I wrote earlier – a month ago, maybe – that I needed to get outside a bit each day and acclimate myself to warmer weather. It was like a New Year’s Resolution; I didn’t lie, but I doubted I would religiously follow through. Oh, God, I regret it now. I really regretted it just after getting into my black car that had been in a paved parking lot.

As I anticipate a “significant birthday” as my doctor called it, I suspect my heat angst has something to do with age. Whatever. However, I am going to make myself go outside in the cooler mornings and then add afternoon time so I won’t faceplant myself if I have to walk a few blocks, let alone mow the lawn. I figure about the time I get adjusted, it will be time for fall and cooler temps.

I am thankful for iced tea, cold meat sandwiches that are bite-sized and air-conditioning. And when I am hot and outside, I am glad for sweat, for it would be very bad for my insides to get as hot as the inside of my car.

This is neither here no there as to any opinion about anything concerning social media; it is just written chuckle, a result of irony in a nutshell. I remember when I was in school, oh long ago, there was a lot of talk and speculation about the future. You know, “1984” and “Brave New World” and the admonishing that if Big Brother wasn’t watching now, he certainly would be in the future.

Well, I’m certain Big Brother is observing and compiling a lot of information, but what struck me this morning is the number of cell phone camera videos made by all of us, and some catching embarrassing or offensive behavior. All Little Brother has to do is post it to the Internet and BOOM.

So Big Brother may be watching everything, but Little Brother is everywhere. I don’t think I expected it all those years ago.

Everything is incredibly green, because we have had lots and lots of rain. There is a weedkiller you can apply to dry grass that only requires one hour to set before rain will not wash it away. So good luck on getting that applied.

A very few days ago the the temperature was in the mid to high 90’s and this morning it was 61 degrees at 10 am. I think it has gone up about a degree. In a few days, it will be hot again. This has been a most unusual summer.

I know this is an off-the-wall topic for me to blog about, but my grandson turned the TV on to a multi-part documentary on rescue teams in the Alps. It is titled The Horn, referring to the Matterhorn, and I was impressed. The scope of detailed preparation and maintenance of equipment to facilitate rescues caught my attention, and the professionalism and maturity of the rescue team members was humbling.

I could go into a lot of details talking about the rescues, but I wouldn’t do it justice. If you get a chance, watch at least one of the episodes and learn about helicopters in the fickle (and cold) weather of the Alps and the paramedics, mountain guide rescue specialists who go down, down, down into crevasses that have opened up and grabbed hikers and skiers in the snap of the fingers.

And, in addition to the topic, the scenery is tremendous.

Do you remember me whining and whining so much about the chilly spring temperatures that I practically earned My Little Old Lady Demerit Scouting Badge? Well, today, right now in the morning, it is 87 degrees and it feels likes like 95.

I am thinking: Be careful what you wish for. I was telling my grandson the other day that I needed to be sure and get outside and acclimate myself to the warmer weather; well, this is not what I had in mind. I think maybe I will go out, sit in the shade and read for a bit, probably a little bit and that is a maybe.

However, before my chilly whining turns into hot b–ching, I am going  to force myself to keep in mind what it was like for my ancestors, of whom I have been reminded lately.

Below you will see a picture of my great-great grandparents and my great grandfather and his brothers and sisters. I think they didn’t dress so heavily on days like this, but even if you pull off a couple of layers, it doesn’t look too cool. (That would be a temperature statement, not a fashion judgment.)

My great grandfather Wesley Wisler is on the far left.

People magazine stresses Suicide Hotline.

Since recent high-profile suicides, much emphasis has been placed on the availability of suicide hotlines; just two months ago, Randa Jarrar tweeted about Barbara Bush, created a deluge of responses and listed a university in Arizona’s suicide hotline as her office number. This caused the line to be overwhelmed with calls.

Jarrar has faded from public attention, but maybe what the boastful tenured professor did is extremely relevant and needs to be re-visited.

After various elections, we have read or heard some celebrities declare they are moving to Canada. Well, after watching a few episodes of Under Arrest, which my grandson had selected from TV listings, I found myself thinking, “Hey, I need to move to Canada.”

This realization hit me just about the same time my grandson remarked, “They are so polite.” Well, yeah, but not only were the RCMP polite, they were much less likely to send you to the slammer than the police on some US police shows I’ve watched.

We observed more than one person resisting answering a few questions in more than an agitated manner and when they were faced with being handcuffed, reacted with such determination that it often took two policemen to struggle with them to get this accomplished. Then, after they had calmed down and been lectured, the RCMP guys said, “Well, you can go now; you’re free.”

Than there was the man who was driving intoxicated, stopped and picked up a prostitute and then the RCMP knocked on his car window. Because he was drunk, they towed his car and summarily suspended his license for 24 hours, but  then told him he could go and reclaim his car in the morning.

Granted, I only watched a few short episodes, but I was thinking, “Hey, I’m moving to Canada.” Now, this is not to say I am going to drive drunk and pick up a male prostitute . . .

When I took the flowers down to my father’s grave, I got to the cemetery and remembered that, “Oh, yeah, there is no pump here.” This was not a big problem because I knew that my cousin Duane lived just down the road.

The cemetery was on a paved, narrow county road with zigs and zags because it was first a road long before surveyors came and it would veer around whatever obstacle had been there, or maybe because it followed the high ground like the Indians did.

This road continued a wee bit and then became a gravel road. Can you imagine the plume of dust that follows a car on such a road? Well, it was my car on that road and I saw that dust following me like a haboob.

I knew Duane and his wife would be at the house by the cemetery because about a month before he had been RUN OVER BY A TRACTOR. He was 84 when it happened and will be 85 this month. He remembers his mom and Daddy’s other three sisters gathering at the house and crying when my father went overseas to WWII.

Phyllis, Duane’s wife, was making  – as in actual homemade – waffle cones for the little diner near by that served iced cream when we got there; but not to worry, she was on the last one. There is something comforting about entering a home where things like that are done.

Duane was on the sofa watching a baseball game, not a bad way to spend the summer, but not really what he would have chosen. Duane’s family has been in farming since at least before his paternal grandfather, and in just about the same area. He doesn’t just use and discard and that is why he was on a 60 year-old tractor that he felt had a little more life in it.

If a tractor could think, it might have disagreed because it kept dying. Duane kept climbing off and crawling under it and fiddling with some component and then continued pulling fence posts. And, one time – the last time for that day, he either forgot to take it out of gear or he jostled the gearshift getting down.

So, after some fiddling from underneath, the engine caught and ran for ten seconds, long enough to run over his right thigh, his collarbone, his back and pin his right hand under a wheel. Fortunately, there had been so much rain that the ground gave way and he got mushed into the mud more than being squashed between hard dirt and tractor wheels.

Of course, he is still outside and under a tractor and his phone is in his right pocket. He managed to reach across with his left hand and get the phone, but the sun was glaring on the screen. So he figured the last person he had called was Phyllis and chanced that option. He was right. His message: Come get me.

I could get detailed now, but it’s probably better if you just imagine the scene with Phyllis wanting to call 911 and Duane saying, Nah, he was okay. They got a neighbor, then I think another one, and got the tractor off him, put him into the car, got back to the house and his daughters got there and decided to call the paramedics, who talked among themselves and airlifted him to Indianapolis.

Cat scans, MRI’s and all sorts of tests and they finally discovered his leg was bruised, his hand bruised, his collarbone broken and two vertebra in his back were cracked. So it was send him home to heal with the admonishment it would take a while because he was older. Not bad for an 84/85 year-old.

And it being the summer, it won’t interfere too much with his practice of attending the local high school basketball games. One of my first bedtime stories, by the way, was “The Night Duane Broke his Arm Playing Basketball.”

So, I got my water from Phyllis in a Prairie Farms milk container and went to the cemetery . . . and I keep that container in my trunk to remember my dad and my links to my family in Fountain County and waffle cones and farm neighbors and old tractors.

After attacking weeds and trying to keep the grass mowed between pouts of rain, nothing much has been done by moi in the yard. This is not to lead  you to understand I have been working inside. No. I have been, for the most part, letting the days go by while I loiter around.

There is a word for it: LAZY.

I did decide, however, that I should make some effort to improve the outside. So I went to the garden center and bought hostas, to add the the many that are already in the back. I do not particularly care for hostas, but it is almost impossible to kill them. For me, that is a very critical point.

FYI: You can throw a hosta in the trash, leave it for a day, change your mind, take it out, replant it and it will grow just fine. If I were a doctor, I would need to have patients like hostas.

I also bought what I consider to be an ugly plant because a lady also in the perennial area mentioned that they were really tough. I hope so.

Now, as to planting them, well, we are predicted to have rain almost all day, so they will have to manage in the vestibule for a day. They should be able to do that. I don’t think of it as being unkind; it is more that I am helping them to be all that they can be.