Are shops still closing early on Sunday in your area? Most do here. This is due to a set of colonial laws, the Blue Laws, that were meant to restrict certain forms of commercial business on the holy day. But that was back in the days with the Quakers and Puritans, when each colony was essentially the same religion, seeking freedom from persecution in their home country.
With so many people observing so many religions in this country these days, and everyone intermingled, there isn’t a good reason to employ these Blue Laws to cause businesses to close early or entirely on Sunday. Not that a retail worker wants to give up that early closing time on the weekend, but it’s fairly easy to believe that a business that is open normally on Sunday is going to do more business than one that’s not.
In this 200-year climate change to homogenized religious beliefs, we’ve started to see some change in the way businesses run. I wonder if the same thing can be said of Memorial Day pool openings.
Around here, pools typically open on Memorial Day weekend. And the water is cold. In warmer places, the pools might open a bit earlier. As you get closer to the equator, you might find some pools that are open year-round. As the Earth warms globally from all of the haze our machinery is coughing into the air, will we be able to open our pools earlier?
It seems to me that this climate change could lead to earlier pool openings. And I suspect - at least, I have a vague coincidental-like feeling - that the recent Daylight Savings changes might also be a result of some environmental effect.
I’ve thought for a few years that scientists might not be telling us everything. Probably not because they’re hiding it, but because they haven’t themselves noticed. For example, what’s with this 23 degrees business?
You learn in grade school that the Earth is tilted on its axis 23 degrees. This combined with the Earth’s revolution of the sun is what causes winter and summer season change. Well, what if the axis wasn’t 23 degrees, but maybe 24 or 25?
Couple a shift in axis tilt with some global warming theories and you’d get really hot summers, and cold but relatively mild winters. This sounds pretty much like our weather these days, I think. So when was the last time someone measured our planet’s tilt? And how do you do that, exactly? Big protractor?
I’m not really one for the pool these days, but Abby sure likes it. I’m sure she’d be happy if we got a pool membership for the summer, and possibly happier if the tilt of the Earth let her swim a little later into fall.
