![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Aguilera.jpg\" "\\"Aguilera\\"")
Please excuse the silly sibilance of this post’s title.\u00a0 I couldn’t stop my star-spangled self.<\/p>\nPlease excuse the silly sibilance of this post’s title.\u00a0 I couldn’t stop my star-spangled self.<\/p>\n
At the start of yesterday’s Superbowl game they offered up, in effect, two national anthems. Lea Michele sang America the Beautiful and Christina Aguilera sang the by-now traditional Whitney-Houstonized version of The Star-Spangled Banner (she didn’t quite pull it off, alas). Fans and players stood reverently for each performance.<\/p>\n
Most Americans stand for America the Beautiful, even placing hands on hearts, just as we do for our official national anthem.\u00a0 In fact, if you don’t<\/em> stand to America the Beautiful people are likely to glare at you.\u00a0 I sat it out one night at an outdoor concert in Tucson, and if stink-eye could kill I’d have been a goner.<\/p>\n I don’t think Americans really want two national anthems.\u00a0 What I think is that we, or at least a lot of us, wish we could swap anthems and replace The Star-Spangled Banner with America the Beautiful.\u00a0 I’d be okay with that.\u00a0 America the Beautiful is stirring, anyone with average skills can sing it, and the lyrics celebrate the beauty and bounty of our land but not its bloody history.\u00a0 Yea to all of that.<\/p>\n But for now, it seems, we’re stuck with two anthems.\u00a0 Maybe three, if you count God Bless the USA, but so far we only stand for that one in venues featuring mechanical bulls.<\/p>\n ——————–<\/p>\n Our gas is back on and we have heat and hot water again.\u00a0 We weren’t expecting the gas utility to reconnect us until today or even tomorrow, but they brought in temporary workers from California and got to our neighborhood around noon on Sunday.\u00a0 We don’t often think about our gas and water — truly we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone.\u00a0 If there’s one positive result of Southern Arizona’s deep freeze and resulting utility failures, it’s that people are now thinking about infrastructure . . . I know I am.\u00a0 There’s a lot of work to be done, that’s for sure, because climate change means more of the same in the years ahead.<\/p>\n We have structural issues of our own in the wake of the cold snap: a broken pressure relief valve in the water system that feeds our yard irrigation system and a broken water pipe inside our pool heater.\u00a0 I thought I’d fixed the first one but it turns out I hadn’t, so I’ve called for professional help.\u00a0 The pool heater leak has to be repaired before we can run the pool pump again, and we can’t let that go for any length of time.\u00a0 Our pool guy says he can do the work and is looking for replacement parts.<\/p>\n Not weather-related but still on the must-do list: the ass end of Donna’s Town Car is dragging on the pavement (it has — or had — air-assisted rear suspension), and the registration renewal on my car is due this month.\u00a0 February, just one week in, is shaping up to be a cruel month.<\/p>\n \n ——————–<\/p>\n I started with sibilance and moved on to structure.\u00a0 I’ll end with science.<\/p>\n