In late June I left Kansas City by car on my annual jaunt to New York and to my native New Jersey. The day I left it was 97 degrees, with hotter weather forecast for the next several days following.
It had been weeks since we had had any appreciable rain, and the landscape reflected it. All across northern Missouri, central Illinois and Indiana the lawns were withered, and the corn seemed to be hanging on for dear life.
Worse, on day two of the trip, a brown haze, smellable and all but tangible, obscured my vision. As I drove across Ohio, I felt as if I were driving into a dystopian future as fast-tracked by Justin Trudeau and his Royal Canadian mountebanks.
For the month I was gone, I shut out news from Kansas City, but it was hard not to hear rumbles about searing heat and global warming, coming not just from friends but from Kansas City, Missouri’s, City Hall.