Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide ...

I have the dubious distinction of being a Louisianian who came up to Wisconsin for a reunion and a brief respite from what had become unrelenting heat and humidity in what has been predicted to be an active hurricane season ... only to have her car submerged in the Great Shorewood Flood. A once in a century event in an otherwise idyllic village. Oh, the irony!

I have also overheard in recent days comments from locals complaining about the heat and humidity index here. But it's all relative, really.

For while thousands stood and sang "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch of the Milwaukee Brewers versus Houston Astros game last Sunday afternoon, scores of people in Russia were dying, literally, from the heat.

Folks seem surprised -- and it's not their fault, really, with the inundation of far more "important" news, such as the latest celebrity scandal -- when I mention that people in Russia are succumbing in record numbers to the heat right now, whether by direct affect or by drowning in an effort to escape it.

Yes, these are the hottest days in history for Russia, as well as for its neighbors, Ukraine and Belarus. We are talking in terms of 1,000 years. This unrelenting blast of heat, smog and smoke, which began on June 27, has been estimated to kill at least 7,000 people in Moscow alone, with the death toll in all of Russia well more than double that figure. It's been predicted that when nature's brutal assault -- compounded by untenable pollution and carbon monoxide levels -- finally ends this year, we will be looking at the deadliest heat wave in history.

Elsewhere, as Haiti struggles to recover from its devastating earthquake, thousands have perished or are missing due to monsoon flooding and landslides in China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, all seems quiet for now in the oil-soaked Gulf, with some scoffing (perhaps as a means of denying the inevitable) about early predictions of an active hurricane season. But sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic have reached record highs. And as I've taught in my children's science show, "When temperatures are high and wind sheers are low, hurricanes form and threaten to blow!"

The only lesson I think I personally can take away from all of this is to recognize that there truly is, as the song goes, "nowhere to run, nowhere to hide." We're all in this together on Mother Earth.