"Red jellyfish sprite" high above Mt. Locke, TX, as photographed by Stephen Hummel on July 2. in the bible the lord sez
we get dominion over the beasts of the earth & the fowls of the air, &c., but has he been to california lately? where death valley notched 130 f -- “could be the hottest reading every reliably recorded on the planet” — plus which, “firenadoes” in no cal, rolling blackouts, 24 sq. mi. charred in so cal, & palm springs hit 120 + record 115 in phoenix (massive duststorm an added extra), & hamamatsu, japan sweated in 104 f for 2 days running (ties national record), but s. brazil had 3 days colder than 17 f for 1st time ever, while in china, xi jinping sez for everybody to save food (after virus, drought, deluge), speaking of which, the flood toll keeps going up: 65 in sudan, 3 in hyderabad, (not to mention transport snarls) — all of it made worse or caused by air conditioning to counteract the heat caused by air conditioning & s.u.v.'s & big- ass factories made by humans, at which point god shd be asking who are these idiots & who gave them dominion?, which shd cause 2nd thots for any god in their right mind
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open water collects
on open ice sheet; smushed corn cribs dribble corn out the bottom like a jar of cornmeal tipped; cracks show in pedestals of a desiccated bridge; sawhorses, pylons; bathers splash ’n’ dunk in the north sea: “hottest week in dutch history”; a house of pure flame against the dark; a cyclone of smoke against flames; hilltop, a bonfire, strains to get some god's attention; shaky pixellated footage shows cops pull people out of sinking cars or usher old folks, in zodiacs, down riverine boulevards; others cling to any- thing high; gray gash in hillside; men wanly wander amid debris at bottom; humans push half-drowned motorbikes in heavy rain; little glass boxes & geodesic domes neatly shelter experimental plants; industrial derrick looms in foggy dawn; white swirls rotate against dark seas; 1k-yr-old red-brick houses, towers, crumble under pounding downpours; man hoses down horse; another lies dead on sizzling pavement; man carries limp, gray burned anteater; maps show arctic in red, not icy blue; the laptop feels warm against the man’s bare legs; sun makes leaves glow green; more ice shaves off another ice sheet & makes a splash Recently I’ve been hearing people — including writers — saying things about the pandemic like “It’s made me reassess what’s really important in life”; “it’s made me take stock of my priorities”; “it’s made me consider how I want to spend the rest of my life”; or, more ominously, “it’s made me feel like there isn’t a future.” Added to the pandemic is social and political upheaval. Added to this is climate catastrophe.
If you really and truly believed you were going to die one day, perhaps one day soon, how would that knowledge affect your priorities? What would you write? What would you read? (Of course, none of us really believe we are going to die . . . ) Postapocalyptic fiction might be one option, to get mentally prepared (and maybe get ideas for prepping). Satire is always popular in periods of decadence and decline. Escapist pulp might keep your mind off things. Maybe you’d turn to writing that broadcasts its sincerity and affective power. Or that claims to dispense wisdom. And the precious, the reflexive, the formalist (and the merely clever) are perennially favorite modes of literature with those with over-active minds who feel the pressure of events pressing in. Personally, writing feels overwhelming, right about now; reading, too, for that matter — though I have to do some of both to prepare for teaching. Teaching is coming up soon, and under present conditions, that’s overwhelming enough by itself. But I can’t escape the feeling that literature, and even formal education, at the moment, is additional — an “added extra” to what most needs doing. “Once I finish my syllabi and get my courses constructed on line, then I’ll start campaigning. Just you wait and see!” But what if it ought to be the other way around? * * * My wife works for a public health agency; back 15 yrs. ago when she started, they did some half-assed trainings about their protocol in case of a pandemic (the experts were warning about it back then). After that, whenever we picked up an extra can or two at the grocery store, or even a purely frivolous snack food, we’d say “for the pandemic” — LOL. Then the current President dismantled the White House pandemic response team — I mean, hey, it cost money, and of all the problems we face, how likely was that, really? Well, guess what? I always buy an extra can or two at the grocery store nowadays — for the pandemic. Which is now. And now we’re playing catch-up. And losing. Something similar is happening with climate change. With a pandemic, economic contraction, racially-motivated police killings, and creeping authoritarianism, who has time to think about climate change? Maybe, as with the virus, climate change will produce a sudden, transformative shock — multiple hurricanes hitting strategic locations at once, a rapid increase in food (or water) prices, an epidemic of insect-borne human, animal, and plant diseases. Then people will have to wake up! If Trump declares martial law, we will rise in our strength! But in the meantime, we’re frogs in the pot, the heat is going up incrementally, and we’re staying put. The water’s fine! * * * “Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. . . . . “But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. . . . In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. . . . And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you . . . . You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing).” — Milton Mayer’s philologist colleague, in They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-1945 (orig. pub. 1955). the stoics always said
“live according to nature.” they didn’t mean reduce, reuse, recycle; no, they thought “man is the rational animal,” ergo living according to nature = living according to reason for human beings. hmm. this raises the question: if it’s so natural, why do we have to be told? how come we don’t just use our noggins from the moment they form? how come we seem to use our reason to destroy the very nature of which we form a part? uh . . . well . . . & while we’re at it: how come nature doesn’t act more rationally, tell me that. one minute, a heat wave in siberia, the next, a flood in the desert! w.t.f.?? if only all transpired rationally, predictably, in heroic couplets. instead, what do we get? water rises up to the bumpers in scotland; in somalia & karachi, there aren’t many cars, but there’s water up to the waist; inundations still sluicing, roiling, spreading in both koreas, s. china, yemen, sudan heatwaves in britain! “if the whole world warms, the u.k. warms. if the summer warms, heatwaves warm,” sez the entirely reasonable climate researcher the stoics also mistrusted & steeled themselves against the power of chance (fortune) to bestow blows or windfalls & that’s just what it does: wind blows trees down in nebraska, iowa, wisc.: one storm “impacted, destroyed or severely damaged” 10s of millions of bushels of corn; another fells a factory in fujian; o fortuna! . . . egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem -- collapses glaciers; collapses salmon stocks in alaska, oysters in florida, cod stocks in n. sea; or dries up wetlands, which catch on fire for 222.4k acres in argentina, where they’re wearing masks for smoke, not germs & have you heard of “cat bonds”? (cat short for “catastrophe”) buyers bet on mellow weather, sellers on disasters — they keep the principal if everything goes to hell hottest summer in phoenix fieriest summer in siberia fires near chernobyl releasing radioneuclides first grinds you down then heals you -- a mind-game . . . though something sets it all in motion, something mental something mind unmindful using perceptions, with intent & thinking thinking thinking sez here
kiribati wants to raise its islands by massive dredging; china will bankroll it & will ask nothing in return . . . meanwhile, back in the states, harris poll sez back in december, “american adults said climate change was the #1 issue facing society. today, it comes in second to last on a list of 12 options”; when the pandemic “ends" (say we), “we’ll drive as much as before; use public transit, bicycle, & walk less, buy more clothes . . . & most of us plan to jack up the home a.c. & heat even more than we already have.” which is to say, if your island is sinking due to sea-level rise, the climate crisis is hi on yr list of priorities; if not, & if you lost yr job + yr extra $600 b/c of the c-virus, then the c-virus becomes the only thing that matters (until you have to put yr house on stilts, but you may not . . .) nonetheless, records: 42 days in a row w/ lo temps above 70 f in washington d.c.; 34 days above 110 in phoenix; & growing # of cities, countries, regions who had “hottest july on record!” recent deaths: 50 in pakistan (flash floods), 43 in assam (rains & landslide), & 41 bangladeshis (floods: water covers 40% of land), 31 so far in s. korea during longest-ever rainy season; even n. korea reports flood evac’s, destruction . . . meanwhile smoke from russian fires covers area ⅓ size of canada; svatay village, 130 km n. of arctic circle, surrounded by fire; villagers escaped by boat on alazeya river but let’s face it: i don’t have to evac. my house should be dry, even according to the direst of the flood maps; there’s plenty of water to waste; it’s hot, but it’s always hot in august; not much forest nearby to burn; meanwhile, i’ve got to figure out how to teach online; try to get some writing done; keep from getting covid & still do the grocery shopping; deal w/4% salary cut. so climate changes goes to the bottom of the list. i mean sure i feel sorry for yemen & kiribati & somalia & stuff, but hey i have problems, too, ok? . . . ok? . . . - get out of bed
- go for a walk - write blog post - work on class syllabi - create “dynamic courses” online to provide “a world-class education” for students - keep the university administration accountable for student, staff, and faculty health - read the news - recruit lots of poll workers - make sure funds local election offices to conduct secure mail-in elections - ensure that there are enough polling sites - prevent the Postmaster General from slowing down the mails as people send in ballots - get an extension on the moratorium on evictions - read e-mail - prepare for Trump to steal the election - prepare for Trump to win the election - prevent Trump from turning the country into a police state - have lunch - construct a poetry manuscript - plant a survival garden - get city govt. to develop a climate resilience and adaptation plan - learn to can - save asylum - read some poetry - prevent widespread adoption of facial-recognition technology - make sure the Census Bureau has enough funding to complete their count - prevent and undo gerrymandering - get on zoom call with friends - do something for the millions facing starvation due to effects of climate change - overhaul U.S. policing policies and methods - shift money from police to social services - restore $600 additional unemployment benefit - eliminate punitive fees for home solar panels in Kansas - enforce a mask mandate in Kansas - dinner - eliminate nuclear weapons - read some more poetry - change lightbulbs to LED - bury car - convert economy to carbon-neutral - harden infrastructure - make to-do list for tomorrow - go to bed - try to sleep exhausted
so just i am -- you? when i was a kid, we thought we’d die in a “nuclear holocaust,” like the people in japan, but much much worse; then the cold war ended & all the nukes went away just like that. the end. they talked about mega- tons of t.n.t. but nobody in 1945 had thought that way before, so had trouble “wrapping their heads around” it. but who needs nukes? this year’s siberian fire season (whoever thought we’d say that?) this year’s siberian fire season already released more co2 than the combined avg. annual emissions of all of scandinavia (norway, sweden, denmark, finland), viz., 204 megatons-worth, 64 more than all of last year. i’m not going to talk about what that means. you can read all about it yrself. meanwhile, flooding killed 20 people in yemen (no names), 17 in korea, w/11 missing (no names), 5 in e. u.s. (no names); “houses & bridge destroyed” (sudan) “saved almost 700 people” (saudi) “affected more than 60k people” (myanmar) “submerged, affecting 13k” (mindanao) “roads ‘have become rivers’” (co. kerry) “collapse of bout earth dam” (sudan) “hottest mo. since records began” (hong kong) “wettest july on record” (mumbai) a waterfall flowed backwards in china; a river flowed backwards in cambodia 2.8 k-tons of ammonium nitrate explodes in beirut, & the world feels like a bomb right now; it feels like it’s going to go on going off No post; no excuses. But there is this little article in Forbes about an Italian book of fairy tales updated for the era of climate catastrophe.
funny weather
we’ve been having: weird, unnatural — & wonderful! hi mon: 79 / norm: 90 lo mon: 59 / norm: 67; even cooler today + (crucially) lo humidity; if climate change looks like this, count me in! & sometimes i think, just here, it will stay o.k. . . . maybe here, mid-continent, we’ll be the center pivot in the middest of weather wonkiness . . . “things will turn out fine”: what romans said in 409 c.e. & anasazi c. 1280 after the 1st rain in several years . . . do you feel defeated? are we deluded? a little of both? this much we know: peatlands are drying. this is a problem. you know how the irish dry chunks of peat to burn for fuel? well, apparently, that happened in siberia, too, only un- intentionally & over many sq. mi., not just one hearth . . . that is, the ground burns first, then sets trees on fire; why it looks more like lava flows than forest fires; & you know how you can bank a fire to keep it smoldering through the night? the same is true of tundra: peat in the ground is already hella banked; hence smoke rising out of snow in winter & “zombie fires” springing to life in spring. those poor siberians, we think. poor caribou, too. poor everybody: peat = carbon; burning = oxidation; burning peat = co2. lots and lots of it. (peat fires are mighty smoky) at least one candidate in our local elections today sez something re: prepping for climate crisis . . . maybe it’s trickling down, but not fast enough: heat records all over spain, s. france; most active atlantic hurricane season-to-date ever recorded; rainfall across australia ↓ 43% in july; china corn future price ↑ 30% (floods in s., drought in n., virus resurgent); & it seems everywhere that flooded last week is flooded more, this week. but weather news only tells you so much, for “the only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen & what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything,” & “it is perfectly simple that there is no reason why the contemporaries should see, because it would not make any difference as they lead their lives,” and if what you are doing doesn’t make you see things differently or prevents you from seeing differently, then you will not see differently, & it will not change how you lead your life. q.e.d. (w this proviso: it may change life per se) . . . continued from 7/30/2020 . . .
Parable of the Sower (published in 1993) is very much a response to the golden age of neoliberalism. NAFTA and GATT had come into force, the economy was picking up, and history officially had been declared at an end; Seattle, 9/11, and the Great Recession hadn’t happened yet. It was an era of withdrawal from government, withdrawal from civic life. Everything, it seemed, was to be fee-for-service, and if you couldn’t afford the fees, well . . . I’ve got mine, jack. The 90s were the decade of rich folks in gated communities and jet-setting cosmopolitan entrepreneurs as the heroic protagonists of the moment. In Parable, we don’t see the latter, but we do know of the existence of the former. In fact, there’s an entire town that’s being walled off and taken over by a corporation that will be in charge of security and economy alike. Some of Lauren’s neighbors view it as an escape; Lauren and her father view it as a trap, an invitation to latter-day debt slavery. There were a few Lauren Olaminas (and Octavia Butlers) who could see how the story was likely to unfold; who could see that privatization and marketization meant the proletarianization of the middle class and the immiseration of the proletariat; who could see that globalization (a.k.a. unfettered capitalism) would accelerate environmental deterioration; who saw that climate “change” and global “warming” were increasing threats to economy and society alike. But the majority weren’t hurting too bad yet, not enough to kick too hard. The majority of carbon dioxide in earth’s atmosphere was put there since Parable was published. It’s getting to where its effects are starting to be noticeable. But not like in the novel. Not in North America, anyway. In the novel, there’s a new U.S. President elected in 2024, Charles Morpeth Donner. He wants to get things back to normal again, to restore America’s greatness, to put people back to work. He wants to suspend environmental and worker-protection laws “for those employers willing to take on homeless employees and provide them with training and adequate room and board.” Lauren reflects: What’s adequate, I wonder: A house or apartment? A room? A bed in a shared room? A barracks bed? Space on a floor? Space on the ground? . . . And what about those suspended laws? Will it be legal to poison, mutilate or infect people — as long as you provide them with food, water, and space to die? Suffice it to say that President Donner (“Donner” — get it?) doesn’t solve the US’ problems, and is succeeded by something much worse. It’s interesting to me that Lauren doesn’t seem to blame the people who started creating her world before she was born. The title “Parable of the Sower” comes from the story of the same name in the Christian New Testament. A farmer casts seed abroad; some lands on pure rock, some on poor soil, some on weed-choked ground, but some lands on good, fertile soil. These last, of course, are the ones that sprout and grow to harvest. It’s about spreading a message and finding people who are ready to hear it. But there’s another parable I’m reminded of, “The Parable of the 10 Bridesmaids” — or “Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins,” or some combination thereof. The bridesmaids are adjured to have their lamps lit when the bridegroom arrives — and the bridegroom is delayed. Five bring enough oil to cover the delay; but the other 5 run out and have to scramble. When the groom finally shows up, the former enter into the feast; but by the time the latter return with their store-bought oil, the door is locked, and they're shut out. It’s a dies irae kind of parable. But it could also apply to earthly disasters, as well. |
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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. |