Weekend Economists Ring in the New! New Year 2015

[Demeter]

47. Ever since last winter's brutal weather--DEMETER RANTS--PART OF FESTIVUS

I find I will not go out in the cold and dark without a life-threatening reason. Even the cold and sunny needs a damn good reason to go out in zero windchills.

It's not that I have to stand on a corner, waiting for a bus (goddess save those poor unfortunates). It's not that I cannot eat or dress for the weather. It's that whatever it is, the activity had better be worth the struggle to put all those layers on, and then take them off, and drag them around, and clean and maintain, etc. etc. And most things in my life aren't worth it, literally.

So maybe I'm reverting to a time when people stayed home when the weather was foul, or they were sick, and made their own entertainment. It may be bad for commerce, but it's much less stressful.

It's not the cold so much as the inconsiderateness. Society is too cold for the weather.

I also think Michigan should start constructing skywalks, like Minneapolis did, and accommodate the people, shelter them from the weather. This city is so hell-bent on bicycle paths, when decent bicycle weather isn't even 50% of the year....and the bus stops don't even have windbreaks! Do they think we are in Miami, or something? Or do they believe that Miami will migrate 1200 miles north in the near future?