Where There's Smoke...

...there's Kansans.

We're getting an extremely high wind blowing up here from the south today which is unfortunate timing as the Kansans have been doing a controlled burn of agricultural land on our border. I guess the people in Lincoln woke to a smoke-filled city this morning. Looking south, I can still see some haze hanging over that area, but up here anyway it has been clear.

If I hadn't read the warnings on the NOAA website to stay indoors, I never would have known. Where we live, everyone burns their rubbish in pits and this time of year, as farmers are getting ready to plough, there's a fire every other day. Somewhere in my prednisone addled-brain a bell went off this morning: I guess breathing all that smoke is bad for you. Then, a second bell went off that reminded me I've spent my life living in two of the most polluted cities in the United States and that whatever the Kansans are slashing and burning off their fields probably doesn't come close to the air quality issues I had living next to Logan Airport for ten years.

There's got to be a "Kansas City Barbecue" joke in this somewhere, but I'm just not finding it.