Stick a fork in me and turn me over. I'm done.

This is crazy. The ice cream melts before I get home, the butter turns into a soupy pool and the dog is tripping over his tongue.

There's a memorable Ray Bradbury line in the movie It Came From Outer Space when the exasperated Sheriff of the small Arizona desert town says to the main character, "Did you know, Putnam, that more murders are committed at 92 degrees Fahrenheit than any other temperature? I read an article once, lower temperatures people are easy-going, over 92 is too hot to move, but just 92, people get irritable!"

I don't know if that applies to Socorro or not. Fortunately, Socorro murders are far and few between, but I can understand the character's sentiment.

Regardless of climate change or global warming, Socorro's summer weather remains true to form. When you live in the northern Chihuahuan Desert you get used to this kind of thing and take everything in stride. Just hunker down and make sure you remember to clean the filter on that swamp cooler.

And these days, thinking about water – beyond the banks of the Rio Grande – becomes not just a given, but a bigger issue than turning on the tap.

About this time last year, the Chapel of the Living Waters at Montosa Campground out toward the VLA hosted a “pray for rain vigil.” I'm wondering if it might be worth repeating sometime this summer.

If nothing else it's another chance to get together with friends and acquaintances and commiserate on the weather. And make it a potluck.

As for the dry heat, we brag so much about to friends and relatives back east, we'll just have to wait around for the autumnal equinox or at least the temporary respite of our summer monsoon rains.

Until that time comes, I usually subscribe to the old saw: If you can't beat the heat, you might as well try to enjoy it, like heading over to the sports complex for the big 4th of July blowout. Lots of music and food and visiting with friends and another great EMRTC fireworks display.

Although the forecast is calling for a few degrees cooler and partly cloudy don't forget to use a little sunscreen and make sure it has a high SPF, the Sun Protection Factor, created by the good folks at Coppertone back in the 1970s.

Prior to that, we called sunscreen “suntan lotion,” but we were deprived of a numbering system for rubbing it on. Sad to say, we just had to wing it without approved levels of ultraviolet protection.

But now we can slather it on with confidence, knowing that the higher the SPF number the longer you can stay out in the sun, for in Coppertone and the FDA we trust.

At any rate, have a happy 4th no matter what you have going on and let yourself feel pride in being an American.

I plan on watching the old Disney movie Johnny Tremain, an old favorite, Friday night, in which James Otis explains to Samuel Adams and Paul Revere why the revolution is necessary.

“For we must fight this war, in meeting house and Congress and the halls of Parliament, as well as on the field. But what it's all about, you'll really never know. And yet it, it, it's so much simpler than any of you think. We give all we have. We fight, we die, for one simple thing. Only that a man could stand.”
Stirring words, indeed, from one of our early patriots.