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© 2003 Brian Hodges - Please do not remove the copyright from this essay
Forgive me for being insensitive, but am I the only one wondering exactly how twenty thousand people just up and died from being too hot? I don't care if they didn't have air conditioning. Open a freakin' window for crying out loud! Go outside and sit in the shade! Fill the tub with cold water and sit in it! Something! Anything! Anything has got to be better than baking inside your own skull until you die. And sure sure, I know most of these people were old and couldn't move around too well. But you'd think a person who doesn't have the strength or motor skills to hobble across a room and open a window must have somebody checking in on them every day. Surely they could have opened a window. The French are calling for an inquiry as to why the government didn't "do more" to help. Do more what, I wonder. Walk through the streets, offering people ice? Aim high-powered fire hoses through all the closed windows? Knock on everybody's door and ask, "Hey, hot enough for ya?" Believe me, I am all in favor of criticizing the French government, but could they really have forced thirteen thousand people to open their windows? It is a free country after all. If somebody wanted to turn their apartment into an easy-bake oven, that was certainly their right. Not that the French government is shirking all responsibility. In response to the continent-wide epidemic, they have decided to abolish one of the country's national holidays… I'm going to say that once more, just in case you missed it or thought it was a typo. The French government, an elected body supposedly, in response to thirteen thousand of its constituents suddenly dying in a heat wave, has decided to select one of France's eleven national holidays, and abolish it. I swear I'm not making this up. The thought behind the proposal is that by forcing the entire country to work on one of their days off, they can use the extra revenue generated that day to finance care for the elderly. Huh? So, what then? Any taxable income earned on the abolished holiday will be used to hire government agents, who will knock down elderly people's doors and drag them out into the shade or something? Great idea guys. I only have one suggestion. Make sure it's a winter holiday you abolish. You wouldn't want to make people work an extra day in the middle of summer would you? Might just exacerbate the situation. The topic of one less holiday is stirring up quite a fuss in France. While some are debating which holiday will be the one to go, others are arguing the merits of sacrificing a three-day weekend. Heads of the business federation praised the proposal, while a leader in the country's Communist party called it "an outrage." Hubert Falco, secretary of state for the elderly (apparently they have their own secretaries), told the Associated Press, "It's one of the possibilities, among many others, to try to find genuine solidarity in the nation. It would be a holiday that would be worked to the advantage of national solidarity." An American ambassador to France disagreed, stating that the best way to national solidarity is to make fun of another nation while boycotting its products. Still others (me) are considering the utter silliness of using tax dollars to discuss national holidays in the first place. But the debates really have been a good thing. They're giving the government a break from having to deal with the thirteen thousand extra corpses baking in the streets. Actually, the heat wave has finally ebbed in Europe. Just in time for the hurricane season to start. I'm sure everybody across the continent, especially in France won't be caught off-guard by the changes in weather this time. When the rain starts pounding, I know they'll be ready. If only for the fact that all their windows have apparently been closed all summer anyway.
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you hear the news that something like twenty thousand people died
in Europe last month because of a heat wave? Twenty thousand!
Because it was hot! Most of them were old people of course.
Thirteen thousand of those deaths were in France alone! 