Cumberland Times News published my item, "Fable for our Times," (today, Friday, Feb 25) though they gave it a different name which I do not like as well. I am surprised that they published it because I am not sure that people get the point, and may take the fable as a literal event, not recognizing Burton Outhuff as a caricature of Rep Barton and Sen Inhofe, those legislators famed as climate change deniers. While this fiction that I wrote never actually occurred, it is true that when I moved to North Dakota, I was told that termites did not exist there because it was too cold, and that as well, intestinal parasites of livestock, fleas, and roaches did not exist, or at least, were not the problem they were in more southerly regions. And people did indeed laugh about the newly built K-Mart in Bismarck having to pay $6,000 for termite prevention. And indeed, I never saw a termite while I lived there. So when I was doing a google search of my brain for some kind of analogy to the blindness of legislators and others who court danger and threaten the future of our civilization by denying the science of climate change, I thought up the story about a person denying the science of termites.
Oh, by the way, after writing the story I googled (for real) "termites North Dakota," and found real articles about real termites in North Dakota! Ah well, poetic license or something like that.
So then, did you get the point?
Gramma Windy
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