This and That -- Two

Here’s another day of some random thoughts on the news and other events.

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In the news, Governor Baldacci is backing a proposed law to ban smoking in cars with children statewide. This doesn’t affect me in any way as I don’t smoke and I don’t have any children young enough to be affected. The proposal is based on a current ban in the city of Bangor. Maine would not be the first state to do enact such a ban as several others already ban smoking in cars carrying children. Maine already very heavily taxes smoking products and is possibly the best state to utilize its portion of the national smoking settlement by promoting quitting. I guess I sometimes wonder why, if smoking is so bad, it isn’t just banned altogether.

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We have cooked stuff in a slow cooker for quite a while now, but it was all simple, traditional food, like a roast or chicken and foods like that. Yes, she did put in vegetables to give the meal some enhancement, but shucks, to be honest, the meals were really our normal dishes just cooked slowly. We eat these simple meals because one of us, and it isn’t she, likes simplicity of food. I guess you might say that person is a somewhat picky eater. She decided recently to try some creativity in the slow cooker and using ingredients I wouldn’t normally use. Well, gee willikers. The stuff has been great. Not being a cook, I can’t give you the recipes she’s discovered, but I’m loving every bite. Too bad I waited so long (almost a half a century) to encourage her creativity.

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Another criticism of our Legislature: For some reason it refuses to put any teeth into punishment for child abusers. At least two outrageous cases recently emphasize the need for adults who take sexual advantage of children to receive much longer prison sentences. In the most recent case, a man took advantage of a young boy. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but all but a few months were suspended. He’ll be back on the streets soon. The other involves a woman who took advantage of a young boy a couple years ago. She also received a five year sentence but all but nine months were suspended. She’s back on the streets now, and she’s been arrested again for abusing the same boy since her release. And a former school administrator was sentenced to 364 days in prison today for sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy. An attempt was made in the last session to pass a Jessica’s Law, similar to one in Florida. But the Legislature resisted calls for mandatory sentences hoping judges would use careful discretion. Nine months in prison doesn’t seem to indicate that discretionary sentencing is working very well.

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Yesterday, temperatures in our section of Maine reached the mid-30s. It was a beautiful day, almost warm and pleasant. There was very little wind. Today, temperatures here again reached the mid-30s. But today was very cold and almost raw. The sun was shining just as brightly, but there certainly was a difference. I got the explanation on the news tonight as our local weatherman explained the difference. It seems that our humidity was about a low as it gets around here and just a few degrees higher than that in the Sahara Desert. It was that low humidity that caused the more uncomfortable feel of the weather. Colder air is heading here for tomorrow and there even could be enough moisture in the air for us to have a few snow showers. Temperatures and our reaction to them intrigue me sometimes. Yesterday and today were 35ish and we thought that even though it felt colder today, it was nice. Yet just a few months from now, May perhaps, that 35 will feel like it’s freezing.

G.D.