��ѻ��ý

But we’re also doing it because the future is terrifying. I went out at 7 a.m. to clear my local traffic island and water the tree that somewhat warily survives in it. I knew the heat and wildfire smoke would assassinate me later. On Monday, ��ѻ��ý’s air was among the filthiest of big cities worldwide.

If you seek cheap attention, be public-spirited in public. Lay it on thick. Say loudly, “I hope this pretty tree lives.” Ferret about in the stinking clogged catch basin with your special crevice tool.��

People notice. Strangers stop to tell you how wonderful you are. Men do a double-take. Parents point at you and tell their toddlers about the nice lady doing the thing nobody bothers doing.

Popularity, so carbonating.

But soon this might be mandated. People might be told to do what the city used to do, smaller services, while governments take on huge projects like flood prep.��

Taxes will rise. This is inarguable. But not for Texans, with a cult of putting rescue ahead of prevention that credulous U.S. reporters call “.”

The recent Texas floods that killed at least 132 people, including dozens of little girls in riverside summer camps, were not news, just part of a decades-long story of avalanche-like floods and people drowning like kittens.

As the  with a tired sense of wonderment at Texan mental habits, Texas is a geographically lousy place to live, a hideously hot climate that invites wildfires, a long Gulf coastline open to hurricanes and rising water, a western desert lost to drought, and the Hill Country regularly overrun by killer floods.

Climate disaster is the Texas version of measles. People elect a government with stasis as an ethos, Pilkington wrote. It would have cost a million dollars to set up flood sirens so they didn’t. The electrical grid has an 80 per cent chance of rolling winter blackouts.

But as Pilkington said, awed, Americans keep pouring into Texas, “attracted by its zero income tax and open spaces; since 2010 it has grown by five million people, to 30 million.”

He calls it “the Texas way,” meaning “the singular devotion of its political leaders to rugged individualism and their equally passionate disdain for government action.”

Can you imagine a ��ѻ��ýnian with sewage water in the basement saying pungent filth is god’s gift? No, we want help and we want it now. The city pestered you about backwater valves. Now they’ll build holding tanks in your neighbourhood.

Imagine our compassionate mayor saying what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said about the deaths: “Every football team makes mistakes. The way winners talk is not to point fingers. They talk about solutions.”

To my mind, the children drowned from neglect verging on manslaughter. Will the solution be weather sirens or the usual lawsuits?

“May God bring comfort to every family affected,” said Abbott who has used a wheelchair since in 1984.��He sued and .��

Personal bootstrapping is just another word for lassitude, born of the cowboy myth busted long ago by Larry McMurtry’s novel “.” The loner with his special hat and bandana is like me, sending out hero signals with my dopey straw bonnet and a bucket of wet weeds.

Do it your way, Texans, as you wonder why you’re always either wet or on fire. Taxes are a collective force for good. Keep that advice under your hat.��