A Wall of Denial

 Jerry and I still talk about an encounter I had in New York City in 2006.  He wasn't with me--I had taken a train from Washington, DC, where we were staying, to Manhattan to go to art museums.  First, to the Museum of Modern Art, then to the Whitney, and then, tired but game, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  All in one day.

Didn't quite trust the map

The Metropolitan Museum is only a short walk from the Whitney, but I hadn't been to New York for years, and I was a bit confused about where I was going (cross Fifth Avenue, turn right).  Walking up Fifth Avenue, I saw a couple who were easily identifiable as tourists:  Overweight and dressed in shorts on an October afternoon.

"Is this the way to the museum?" I asked.

"Yep, we think so," the woman said.

We walked along.  They were jovial and talkative.   They told me that they were from Florida.

I'd just seen Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," and I remembered that Florida was particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels.  I asked them if they were worried about that.

"No," said the woman.  "We're red-staters."

That was probably the first time that I realized science could be seen solely through a scrim of politics.

I offered that my husband was a scientist and that every scientist he knew believed that global warming was a fact.

"We live 30 miles inland," the man laughed.  "If it happens, we'll have an ocean view."  

There was really nothing more to say.  We climbed the steps of the museum and went our separate ways.

When I got back to Washington, I told Jerry about it, and he was both disbelieving and amused.  It was one of the best stories he'd heard yet on the subject, he said.   Over the years, we've joked about that couple getting their ocean view.

 Now it doesn't seem so funny.

This came to mind when I read Paul Krugman's column  today's New York Times.  The deniers are still out there, even with shrinking polar ice packs, extreme weather, and rising oceans.  Sometimes I wish I could ask the Florida couple what they think now--is it still a political ploy?

Something tells me they'd still say yes.

* * * * *

I can't even address the matter of gun control.  Guns kill, but that's something to be denied, too. 

A telling fact: I've had a frivolous post ready to publish for over a week, and each day I plan to click on "Publish," there's another mass killing, and it seems insensitive and utterly beside the point to go through with it. 

I'm taking BART to San Francisco today,  and, honestly, I'm a little worried about being on public transportation.  Is this what it's like to live in a war zone?

Travel of any kind feels more perilous these days