Check in with WOOT tomorrow for "aunties," an amazing new poem by Judith Roitman. Don't miss it!
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balmy last week,
freezing rain today; precip month to date: 1.18” norm month to date: 0.45”; typical kansas weather only moreso; but winter weather worse in kashmir: 104 dead of avalanches in pakistan’s slice (& no it’s not normal there), the latest a 10-yr-old girl: "she had suffered fractures in her skull, orbital bones & left leg; despite our best efforts died of her brain injuries," sez the doc. "i am not in my senses. we have lost almost everyone in the family - from young kids to elderly," sez the uncle, meaning 19 members in all; "we are trying our best to alleviate their sufferings," sez the govt. man & rain? you call this rain? tell it to people in s. zambia, where it’s flooding again – last year, 98% of maize (the staple) wiped out; or tell it to folks in lucknow, uttar pradesh: record jan. rainfall; or in galicia, where inundaciones cut off traffic, kept people indoors, sank sinkholes; or in japan, where flooding gets worse every year: “it’s physically impossible to deal with all ex- pectations,” sez a plant manager; “we want the ad- ministration to explain the cause of the flood & measures to be taken in the future,” sez another (good luck w/that); & fiji hosts its 2nd cyclone in 3 wks.: cyclone sarai “destroyed my house & almost left my family homeless. my daughters had to hide under their bed from the strong winds. it was a scary experience” is a scary experience & mississippi r. flooding starts up again, in mid-jan. . . . meanwhile, in the s. hemisphere: it’s hot. & dry. e.g., in southern africa (“o god he’s going to start in on africa again - pls! africa’s a basket case - we’re sick of hearing abt africa - talk abt somwhere more . . . interesting!”) in southern africa, drought leaves 45 m people, mostly women & children, facing “severe food insecurity” ⇒ lack of consistent access to enough food for an active & healthy life — i.e., “hunger crisis on a scale we've not seen before”; & 104 in central chile, & 110s in n.w. queensland; but some rain in victoria & n.s.w.! it helps containment: good news, since 99 fires still burning, 30 uncontainedly: “moment of crisis has come,” sez sir david attenborough; no shit sherlock, sez i -- come & gone, more like we want someone to explain the cause, we want them to explain it isn’t our fault, we want them to spell out the measures to be taken in the future (the future!) we want it all just to go away but they won’t & it won’t b/c they figure if you’re on the titanic, you may as well have a nice berth I have yet to find a climate-fiction dystopia that features a protagonist over 50. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of supporting characters or ensemble characters in that category. But not protagonists. There’s probably one or two out there that I just don’t know about, but I can’t believe there are many. This might be surprising, given that most sci-fi that appears in this country (US) tends to take place in the global north (esp. US), where life expectancy has (until the last couple of years) grown longer. But it’s also not surprising. A lot of authors writing climate-fiction are under 40, so they might not be able to identify with those of us who are (to them) superannuated; but then, even Louise Erdrich and Margaret Atwood have pretty young central characters, in their cli-fi works. Maybe the assumption is that all the older folks will die out quickly and that young people won’t live to old age much anymore. Based on the climate data, as well as what we’re seeing on the ground in the most vulnerable parts of the world, those seem like pretty reasonable assumptions upon which to premise a realistic future.
Or it may be that Americans idolize youth. But I wonder if part of the issue isn’t generational resentment. I sense a current of underlying mistrust in a lot of the youth strikes and protests – not just towards the gray-haired “leaders” who have no intention of doing anything meaningful to mitigate, or even adapt to, climate chaos, but, well – mistrust of anyone over 30. A young (to me) climate activist recently told me that ze couldn’t get into a Sunrise Movement organizer training program because they don’t take people over 30. As somebody who’s done some organizing, that strikes me as a bit of a short-sighted strategy. Sunrise has done great work, but there aren’t exactly millions of people in the streets so far. And many of the XR people in the streets in Britain are decidedly post-30 – vide white-haired seniors gluing their hands together and being carted off by the cops. Now, the local Sunrise folks here in our little college town have been nothing but welcoming to me when I’ve showed up to their events – and I’m guessing some of the most active people there are over 30. But there seems to be a general, low-level age-based animus out there. And why wouldn’t there be? Most of the anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere got there in the last 30 years (i.e., my adult life). So, it’s natural to ask questions Why didn’t you do anything?? Or What were you thinking?! Well, for my part, I honestly didn’t realize how fast things had gotten how bad, until that IPCC report last year. We’d become so inured to the scientists saying “Oh – you know those last projections we made? Well, turns out things are way worse. But we cannot definitively link . . . ” etc. So, when they started saying, “OK – we’re not gonna lie – things are pretty fucking terrible. Probably worse than we can imagine. Go ahead and panic,” it got my attention. I think that was true for a lot of people. Previously, it had been a kind of “the-poor-ye-have-always-with-ye” kind of thing – “Terrible problem, just terrible. Yes, we really must do something about that. Seems like there are good technologies out there, right? More people are riding bicycles. And the opinion polls . . . Well, maybe it will destroy us in the next century.” But no – it’s more like the coming generation – some would say decade. Then there’s the enormousness of the enormity. Who can comprehend the scope of it all? Let alone all the variables? Let alone what levers to pull and buttons to push to fix it? In The Wall, by John Lanchester (who is pre-Millenial by a good bit), the main character, a twenty-something, is enduring a stint as a “Guardian” on the Wall – an actual “Great Wall of Britain,” designed to keep out "The Others," that surrounds the entire coastline of the country. It’s a shitty job that all young people have to do and that many don’t return from. But his parents were already too old for service by the time the Wall was built. This creates a certain amount of bitterness, as you might imagine. The parents respond to the situation by willed ignorance and escapism. There are no more beaches anywhere in the world, due to sea-level rise, and they’re obsessed with beach movies. Frankie Avalon. Anette Funicello. They’re comfortable enough, well inland, while the son – well, he has adventures. Just read the book (it’s very good). I expect this generational conflict to become more pronounced in literature, in the coming decade. One’s generation has a lot to do with the way one views the future. For the post-WWII generation, the future looked bright. My dad talks about the sense that, having defeated the Axis and the Depression, Americans could do anything. Of course, succeeding generations didn’t see it quite that way. Korea and Vietnam went south (literally). There seemed to have been an upwelling of idealism in the 1960s, but the backlash by the “silent majority” gave birth to the Nixon-Reagan era, of which we are in the advanced stages. I came of age when AIDS did. And Reagan came to office. And American real incomes started the inexorable slide we’re still experiencing. It’s all too easy for me to extrapolate further decline, corruption, disaster, degeneration. But it seems like young people either (a.) can’t afford to be defeatist about the future b/c they haven’t had one yet; or (b.) feel born under a cloud of doom. Maybe a combination of both. Some fester in depression or die by suicide. Others throw themselves into organizing and fighting. Whatever the outcome, they’re producing some interesting writing. I’ll keep reading them – a even if their main characters or speakers aren’t people my age. first the good news: some
scorched koala bears re- covered! huzzah! now, the bad: “intersections between climate change & nuclear war . . . powerful forces push both threats toward most destructive outcomes,” i.e.,: “climate chaos is a threat multiplier” like in russia, where the nationalist pol sez: “if our permafrost melts now, it will be a disaster. the americans know this, so they are testing their climate weapons on us” . . . “climate weapons”? damn. i’d shoot off a nuculur bomb over something like that – wouldn’t you? but: here’s some sorta bad news to offset that really really bad news: “drought is becoming more common, & that could lead to a drop in conflict b/c going to war over dry land might simply not be worth it” but – but – it’s flooding in the desert! & now, it’s snowing in saudi! w/sub- freezing temps; 130 afghans & pakistanis dead from avalanches, severe snowfall, collapsing roofs, floods, landslides; et cetera! & the fires down under are as big as (a.) w. virginia (b.) belgium (c.) romania; "it is conceivable that much of australia simply becomes too hot and dry for human habitation," sez the “acclaimed climatologist”; the bright side? nobody will want to invade . . . b/c conditions there are "what we expect to happen on average in a world of three degrees of global warming . . . it brings it home to you what climate change means" but dude, are you ready for the really, really super bad news? – “climate change is killing alpine skiing as we know it” shit – if that doesn’t get their attention at davos, i don’t know what will . . . & while we’re in the mts.: q: what’s the proper response when a melting glacier heads down the road you’re on? a: go back! but ain’t no goin’ back, y’all – ain’t no back to go to – we’re down that road too far & even if the russians aren’t comin’ to getcha, gaia is There is SO much climate fiction (“cli-fi”) these days that I keep thinking there will be a similar surge of climate poetry (“cli-po”?). I’m searching, as I browse journals, websites, the Small Press Distribution new releases. There are some promising new titles I haven’t read yet. And I expect there will be a fair amount of Australian poetry in the next couple-three years that deal with climate catastrophe, in one way or another. But aside from some notable exceptions, there doesn’t seem to be much out there yet.
Take, for instance, the Academy of American Poets page “Poems About Climate Change.” There are indeed some poems that really are about climate change: Mikko Harvey’s “The Poem Grace Interrupted”; Eunsong Kim’s “Romance #1”; or Jay Parini’s “Some Effects of Global Warming in Lackawanna County.” Craig Santos Perez’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier (after Wallace Stevens)” is a satirical gem: its send-up of Stevens is simultaneously a critique of aesthetic “disinterestedness” – a reminder that, while many writers in the 1930s could not ignore the Depression, some actively sought to do so and had the money to pull it off. And the same is true today, mutatis mutandis, w/global heating. As for the rest of the poems on the site . . . well, there are poems that allude to climate chaos; there are poems that take climate change as an implicit backdrop; there are eco-poems that deal with issues that are related to climate change, e.g., extinction of animal and plant species, but without drawing explicit connections. Only a few face head-on the reality of global heating and atmospheric whipsawing. Likewise, there are books of poems that take on a variety of contemporary ills, in which global meltdown is, in effect, one of a list of “issues” (just like in U.S. political discourse) – a lot of poets have their one global-warming poem, mixed in with all the rest. Or it is kinda sorta in the background. “Eco-poetry” deals with oil spills, waste dumps, erosion, habitat degradation – and o yeah the transformation of planet earth into planet Venus. Well, at least the writers aren’t oblivious. But are they (we) looking at the situation squarely? I mean, living with it, understanding the crisis in on a gut-level, seeing oneself in it? Perhaps Perez’ forthcoming book Habitat Threshold (Omnidawn, March 2020) will be the breakthrough that prompts poets to grapple with the biggest ecological, social, economic, and existential threat in human history. Or maybe not. Nature poets are a big part of the problem. There’s a tendency for those who have the means and the time to enjoy open space and to appreciate other species apart from cities to use those natural spaces as emotional or spiritual refugia – or, worse yet, metaphors. We lament the extinction of plants and animals we may or may not have seen – indeed they become the unconscious scapegoats for our repressed guilt and grief (it’s easier to deal with dying polar bears than dying humans – esp. a dying me). But ah, today the bees are buzzing, the tall grass is sussurussing, the trees are tall and mighty, and for this one moment, all’s right with the world. Just don’t think about Zambia or Australia or the near future. [Now, this is the part of the blog post where you go to the comments section at the bottom and write, “But, Joe – what about Jane Norshenberger’s Climate Crisis Has Ruined My Life??” – or whatever (actual) titles and poets you can think of who directly reference the climate emergency. Esp. poets from the global south. Thanks in advance!] But I suspect a large part of it is that we North-American poets are each so trapped in our own personal traumas that it’s difficult to take on the biggest trauma of all. What we do to each other in our own communities is immediate and immediately painful, and so that’s what we focus on. What Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, & Exxon-Mobil are doing to our collective host organism (the biosphere) seems more distant, much slower, less visible, less dangerous. Day-to-day violence – esp. when you’re the victim – trumps one-day-sooner-or-later apocalypse. As a result, we can’t confront the probability that our kids’ future will be nasty, brutish, and not so short. We understandably want to work through the psychological hurt our daily lives cause. We want belonging, not more alienation. Ultimately, what we really want is a happy ending. But there isn’t going to be a happy ending, because there isn’t going to be an ending. How will poetry address this unprecedented situation? Will it? Will we? Composite map image showing temperature variation in Australia over last 119 years. ice ‘n’ snow chez nous – where’s that good ol global warming ha ha – well, it’s in new england: 74 f sat. in boston – the avg. for orlando, fla. – warmest jan. day in beantown history, 30˚ > avg. “t-shirts today but sweatshirts tomorrow” (38 right now) – some of that good ol’ “weather whipsaw”: blizzards all across n. tier, jan. tornadoes in s.e. w/ 11 dead (“please take these warnings seriously,” the man said); meanwhile, n. cape, s. africa declared disaster zone (“drought- stricken”: govt. promises relief funds); 30k farm workers out of work; angola gets the ol’ drought-and-deluge treatment, where rain = runoff, flash floods; drinking water, electricity cut off for many meanwhile, flooding in the desert – in the negev, israeli fighter jets swamped in hangars (& they’re surfing the streets of tel aviv – literally); flooding in the u.a.e.; massive inundations in s. iran: 1248 rescued (according to the govt.); 15 dead of flooding, landslides in afghanistan, people dying of exposure, too; torrential deluge caves in roofs in pakistan; australia’s n. territory drowns in 19” rain / 24 hrs., while the s.e. burns, feeding a trail of smoke that girdles the globe, creating its own thunderstorms, its own lightning, starting new fires, ~ 400 tons carbon up in smoke, creating its own weather for decades to come: “we don’t know where we’re going,” sez the climate scientist . . . in the meantime, 250k humans advised to evac meanwhile, folks in “the wettest place on earth,” meghalaya state in india’s n.e., say "we had plenty of water throughout the year earlier, a lot of natural springs & it rained so much. now we collect whatever we can when it rains & save it for later" – half the rainfall of 1861 – "we never learnt to save water; there was so much water; this year, just 2 weeks of very heavy rain" a “water whipsaw,” you might say: & drier places (like kansas) had better get ready to ride it – back & forth, yin & yang spinning till it blurs into gray, til it hurts, a whipsaw gnawing the base of the world-tree, & the only thing we know for sure: the squirrels till survive it all Pretty self-explanatory. From the Water, Peace & Security program of the Dutch government. They also have a very useful interactive website predicting where water wars will erupt in Africa and west and south Asia.
As much as I need to live like I might die tomorrow, I need to live like I might see a hundred years on this odd green and blue planet. Unless things change, I’m not burning every bridge. I’m trying to maintain a career. If I was certain to die under a fascist regime by 2021, there wouldn’t be much point in writing novels: they take too long to write, publish, and reach their audience. I get some joy from the writing itself, sure, but I get more joy from putting my art in front of people, of letting it influence the cultural landscape. With novel writing in particular, that takes time. That takes there being a future. I want there to be a future. Almost desperately. Not enough to bank on it completely.
I’m keeping some small portion of my time and resources invested in the potential for there to be a future is important for my mental health, because it keeps me invested in maintaining that health. - Margaret Killjoy, “How to Live Like the World Is Ending,” Birds Before the Storm (blog). * I like the above quotation because it gets at the ambiguity of the situation in which we find ourselves. We face a radically foreshortened time-horizon. Ecological, geological or military disaster threaten everybody on the planet. Maybe life expectancies may remain unchanged but everyone will live under an authoritarian regime of one kind or another. Those of us in the global north can still imagine a future, no matter how “woke” to the climate emergency we may be. Indeed, it may be difficult for us not to imagine a future that is like the present, even if our imagination of the future is rather dire. We want to hedge our bets. After all, some may live to 100, others die in squalid camps at age 10 due to climate crisis. We expect to live to see tomorrow, even though we know the clock is at 2 minutes to midnight. But it’s always been at 2 minutes to midnight, right? So . . . If you don’t live like there’s a tomorrow, tomorrow may get here anyway and find you ill-prepared. But if you live like there’s no tomorrow, it might make tomorrow, if it gets here, happier and healthier than a stressed and fearful today. I write poems, mostly. Writing a poem generally does not entail as extensive an investment of time as does a novel – or any book project, really. Poetry writing also takes all hope for any substantive fame and fortune out of the equation, which brings one back to first principles. And much of the “poetry” I write nowadays ends up on this blog – that is, receives its initial publication the same day it is written. Which makes for a lot of poetry that’s green, in more ways than one. But, as Killjoy notes, there is a certain satisfaction in putting one’s work before people; and the verse I write for this blog (unlike some of the stuff I write) is definitely intended for a reader on the other end. The particulars may or may not make any difference to you 7 days from now, but hopefully the cumulative effect will. Any given entry is urgent, sure, but it’s the tick tick tick, drip drip drip that’s ultimately most important. And it’s a record – not as permanent as the pigment around the outline of a hand on a cave wall, but a trace, nonetheless. It’s a way of reassuring myself that I’m here – that we are here. That we were here. That no matter what happens tomorrow, somebody made it to today. My guiding fiction is that I will keep writing the verse chronicle until the electricity or internet connectivity shuts off for good. Maybe then I’ll keep a journal, if I can find something to write with and on. Killjoy’s guiding fiction is fiction – i.e., that there will be enough time left for her to finish her novel and for her readers to finish it, too. And the act of writing the novel reassures the writer (and maybe the reader) that there is a middle-distance future. Perhaps the very plan for the novel is the beginning of the spell to bring the future into being. But the really wise people know that all of this is a story that has been and is being told all along. The only question is whether it is written in stone or writ on water. warm ‘n’ windy –
not a new cocktail, just the way things are around here in l.f.k.: yesterday: hi 55 f / norm 39; lo 39 / norm 18; people were grillin’ last weekend, saying, “gotta like this weather!” i guess i gotta – i might as well: 62 predicted today; but 18 predicted tomorrow, so we’ll be back to “normal” it’s warm in scandanavia, too: no snow in helsinki (just like moscow!) & 46 f; sweden: highest jan. temp since 1858; norway broke its jan record last week – twice – another day of holkehelvete (“slippery- slope hell”) last year europe’s hottest ever but a break for the greenland economy: melting permafrost & sea-ice mean it’s easier to mine & ship rare earth metals! there will be winners . . . & the last shall come . . . meanwhile: landslides – they’re not just for third world countries anymore! “a landslide caused by heavy rain left three caravan holiday homes teetering on the brink of a cliff” in norfolk; “six landslides on railway lines across kent and east sussex” + massive sinkholes on hiways ("what's a st. cole?" she asked), & c & c – a veritable landslide of disaster news – a slippery slope a hell – reservoirs dry up in e. & s. africa, they overflow in cyprus (“residents woke up to find a river where a road had been”); “severe rainfall battered” istambul: rush-hour called off; under- passes inundated; 104 k winds ripped roofs; “body was found in a river bed tuesday” or “buried alive when a landslide hit a makeshift house”; meanwhile, in israel, a man helps 3 escape a car in floodwaters which then sweep him away; it floods & it floods while e. australia really needs “widespread, above-average rainfalls” – not bloody likely soon: “it looks like something that we will have to persist with for some time,” this flaming hell; so, “if you receive instructions to leave, then you must leave” (that sounds like a metaphor); meanwhile a cyclone hits the country’s “top end” w/lotsa rain; meanwhile, 3k people in papua new guinea found food gardens smashed by hail; & in bangkok the water’s starting to taste salty, as the drought creeps on . . . & in all these places there’s a man who says: “put your fate in my hands & i will keep you safe”; & people have to think “who will?” There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke. – Bob Dylan, “All Along the Watchtower” (1967) I think my favorite character in Moby-Dick may be the second mate, Stubb. Starbuck, the first mate, is sensible and earnest. Flask, the third mate, is pugnacious and florid. Captain Ahab is . . . well, very focused. Ishmael, as a good gothic narrator, is by turns curious, horrified, and awestruck. But Stubb? Dude don’t take nothing seriously. Including annihilation. Ishmael describes him thusly: A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged for the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests. . . . When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. Substitute “climate chaos” or “total social breakdown” for “whale,” and you’ll see where I’m going with this. . . . Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there, about something which he would find out when he obeyed the order, and not sooner. Ishmael attributes Stubb’s good humor to his pipe-smoking, as he (Ishmael) can see no other cause for it. Stubb is fond of improvising little ditties in the most inappropriate situations: “He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster.” In one scene, the Pequod sails into a typhoon – or the typhoon sails into it. The canvas sails are torn, and the masts are stripped. Things are looking pretty dire, from Mr. Starbuck’s POV. But Stubb? Not so much. “Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck,” said Stubb, regarding the wreck, “but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for one, can’t fight it. You see, Mr. Starbuck, a wave has such a great long start before it leaps, all round the world it runs, and then comes the spring! But as for me, all the start I have to meet it, is just across the deck here. But never mind; it’s all in fun: so the old song says;”—(sings.) Oh! jolly is the gale, And a joker is the whale, A’ flourishin’ his tail,-- Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh! The scud all a flyin’, That’s his flip only foamin’; When he stirs in the spicin’,-- Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh! Thunder splits the ships, But he only smacks his lips, A tastin’ of this flip,-- Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh! “Avast Stubb,” cried Starbuck, “let the Typhoon sing, and strike his harp here in our rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold thy peace.” "But I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a coward; and I sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is, Mr. Starbuck, there’s no way to stop my singing in this world but to cut my throat. And when that’s done, ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a wind-up.” Indeed, when the tips of the bare masts light up with St. Elmo’s fire, Stubb quails along with the rest of them. But up to that point, he retains his good humor. And why not? He accepts that there’s nothing he can do. To a large extent, we can't fight climate change, either. A lot of future heavy weather is already programmed into the system by the last 30 year’s-worth of greenhouse-gas emissions – and there’s good reason to believe the heating of the planet thus far has triggered feedback loops (e.g., release of frozen methane and CO2 in the oceans and permafrost, creating more heating). This is leaving aside the issue of whether the human brain is capable of solving global problems. Nonetheless, we feel the need to fight it - to do otherwise would be - well, not brave. But Stubb just takes it as it comes. Oh, he does what needs doing in the moment – he’s very particular about how his whale-boat is rigged-out and arranged, he keeps his harpoon as sharp as anyone else, and he hunts whales with the best of them. But he doesn’t let it faze him. "The sea will have its way." Now there’s the way to face the strongest of hurricanes and the highest of king tides! However, when it's a human doing the fighting, it's a different story. When Capn. Ahab calls Stubb a “dog,” Stubb talks back – and lives to tell the tale: “I will not tamely be called a dog, sir.” “Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone, or I’ll clear the world of thee!” As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated. “I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,” muttered Stubb . . . But he backs down: even as Ahab’s mad obsession becomes ever more oppressive and deadly to the crew, there is no mutiny. Christian is too law-abiding. And Stubb . . . well, Stubb don’t give a shit. He’d just as soon sink as swim. The source of his “courage” in the above encounter is the same as that of his nonchalance and lack of motivation in others: I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles! I feel funny. Fa, la! lirra, skirra! Stubb plays the Fool to Ahab’s Lear: the second mate is the court jester, telling it like it is by pointing out the irony of it all. His very life is a satire, and he’s the only one laughing – la de da. O to be Stubb, in this era of continuous, seemingly-intractable, environmental calamity! (It is worth noting, however, that Stubb does indeed go down with the ship – along with everybody else. Except for Ishmael, the researcher-writer, who lives to tell the tale – though how much longer than that, we are not told.) But my wish to be a Stubb proves I’m not. Maybe a Mr. Starbuck, trying to urge those in authority to avert disaster (and being ignored). Or Maybe an Ahab – obsessed by a whale of a problem. |
Archives
June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |