OK, I will acknowledge that winter has come to South Dakota. We don’t have much snow out there, but it is officially cold: about 7 degrees Fahrenheit right now. The other end of the state got hammered with the precipitation and the cold all at once and there were highways closed in the Eastern part of South Dakota last night. It is below zero in Sioux Falls. There really wasn’t that much snow, so I expect that things will get going relatively soon once daylight shows up in that part of the state. Basically, it is one of those days when it is good to be in Rapid City. Our roads are better than most of the rest of the state. But it is cold outside. It is probably a bit harder to worry about global warming when it is so cold outside.

Sitting inside a warm house with no need to travel, however, is not a bad place to be for a day off. I have plenty of chores to accomplish close to home, though I can’t linger with a cup of coffee over the newspaper until I make it to the end of the driveway to pick up the paper. I’m thinking I’ll slip on a pair of shoes for that journey.

Compared to previous generations, we really have it easy when it comes to weather. It wasn’t that long ago that a night hovering around zero meant that you’d better have your car plugged in. There were even a couple of cold times when I would take the battery out of a vehicle and bring it indoors to keep it warm for maximum cranking power the next morning. We had headbolt heaters on every vehicle we owned before fuel injection was common. Life has changed. Our power systems are reliable. Although we do have a good woodstove as a backup source of heat in case of an interruption of electricity, such interruptions are so rare, that we don’t need to have much wood on hand here at the house.

I do have good clothes just in case I need to go outdoors. A pair of insulated coveralls is nice if one has to spend much time out of doors in the cold. I’ve also got warm boots, good gloves, a heavy parka and other things that make being outdoors bearable. But I don’t have any cattle to feed or other animals to care for except a cat that prefers to have her food delivered to her bowl indoors thank you very much.

So I’m not very worried about the cold. It will pass in its own time. The elders tell us that cold winter days are the best time for telling stories and there are some pretty good stories worth telling. I’ve got a couple of novels and about half a collection of short stories that are waiting for me to read them.

But we won’t have any party balloons around the house today. I don’t have any of that special string. Special string is code for a story that we tell about someone who wanted to have party balloons and didn’t know about helium. So she thought that what kept the balloons up in the air was “special string” that was stiff enough to hold a balloon. We all laugh when we tell the story, but perhaps inventing some special string would be a good idea.

Peter Wothers is a professor at the University of Cambridge and, according to the Daily Telegraph, he intends to begin to lecture against party balloons. Something tells me that this isn’t going to be a very popular topic. I’m not sure how many opportunities Professor Wothers will get to speak once his topic is known.

A quick refresher might be in order. Helium is number 2 on the Periodic Table. It occupies the upper right hand corner of the chart, the first in the column of inert gasses that also includes Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and Radium. These gasses are elements, which means among other things, they cannot be synthesized. The source of helium is finding pockets of the gas beneath the ground. It can then be captured and held in pressurized tanks. Most of the helium that is in use in the world today is extracted as a byproduct of Natural Gas mining.

There is a worldwide shortage of helium and that means that the price is going up. There are several things that we take for granted that are in limited supply. Taking helium from deep below the surface of the earth and releasing it into the atmosphere makes it much harder to capture the gas. Helium has lots of uses. It is mixed with oxygen to help patients who are suffering from heart and lung diseases to breathe more easily. It is used to cool magnets in MRI scanners used in hospitals. It is also used in high-tech manufacturing and physics research. It is considered to be an essential element for a modern society and the United States government maintains an official helium reserve in Amarillo, Texas. At a remote site, the bureau of Land Management oversees approximately 30% of the world’s known helium reserves.

And now there is a shortage. And in a free market economy that means the price is going up. Currently the amount of helium that it takes to fill a party balloon is worth about $1.00. That’s about 4 times as much as was the case a couple of years ago. It is expected that prices will rise sharply for the next few months. New plants under construction in Wyoming, Russia and Qatar are expected to be online shortly and should temporarily ease the shortage.

Professor Wothers, however, says that party balloons are an unwise use of the gas even if the supply temporarily takes an uptick. The gas is simply too precious to waste he argues: “I can imagine that in 50 years’ time our children will be saying, ‘I can’t believe they used such a precious material to fill balloons.’”

And I can’t find anyone who is seriously arguing for opening the neck of the balloon and inhaling a bit of the gas for the great “Alvin and the Chipmunks” vocal effect.

I suspect, however, that I’m a bit like the Professor. On a cold day when I could be getting lots of things done around the house I’m sitting at my desk writing about helium. 50 years from now my grandkids will have difficulty believing that I used my precious time in such a frivolous manner.

Maybe I should be working on the development special string.

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