Whither Blankets?

(from the Sunday Peanuts strip, April 3, 1955.

taken from The Complete Peanuts Vol. 3)

This is something I reflect on a little too often: I now live in a place where it's cold most of the time.  You see, I grew up in the Dallas area, in Texas.  We have something like a winter there, it probably lasts three months or so, it gets pretty cold a few days but mostly it's just grey.  W don't have much of a spring or fall.  In March, it starts getting warm, & stays that way until maybe the end of October.  That's roughly two-thirds of the year where it's potentially very, very hot outside.  In the summers - this is true of Austin, too, of course, where I lived for over twenty years - it can be over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit for months.  No matter how much you crank your air conditioner, you don't ever really feel cold.

That changed when we moved to Appalachia.  They have a summer that lasts maybe three months, with usually only a week or two that they feel like is too hot - & even then, it's just in the 90s.  I guess I knew things were different when we were planning a benefit show for WRFL & it would happen at the end of September.  I suggested maybe doing it outside, & someone said, "Oh no, it'll be too cold by then."  The Austin City Limits festival happens in October, & it's still hot as fuck in Austin at that time!

We got to experience the misery of "hot most of the time" Texas when we returned in 2016.  During the summer we walked the dogs early in the morning because in the evening the concrete was just too hot for their poor paws & of course the day was too punishing.  Even that early, it would be 85 degrees out - yes, at 5:30am!

But here in Portland, the reverse is true.  Two mornings ago I went for a walk around 9am with the hounds & the way I dressed you would've thought it was a brisk Autumn day.  It's the middle of Spring!  It's 64 degrees as I write this, but 86 degrees in Fort Worth.  But wait!  The weather site I just glanced at assures me it "feels like 92 degrees."

Being back where it's cold most of the time has given me a renewed appreciation of blankets.  Thinking about blankets made me think about doing a show about blankets, & that's happening tonight at midnight on 90.7 KBOO Portland, simultaneously online at kboo.fm.  There's a good chance someone listening will be under their own blankets at the time!  That's a nice thing to think about.