This will be the last entry to POOC & WOOT for 2020. Join us again on Jan. 4, 2021, when everything will be better. record hi for seattle’s winter solstice
(59 f); a few hours later, ½” snow . . . ho ho here, 48 hrs of constant wind: (25 mph, gusts 35); the gulf has hurricanes, bangladesh has floods, semiarid regions have drought; maybe windstorms are to be our x-treme weather signature. sure seems like more of it than when i first got here, way back then, way back down on the curve the good news is there’s not as much bad news today — at least, not weather-wise but climate is another story, as brain-eating amoeba move farther north w/warmer water temps; & intervals between trees’ flowering & leafing grow, making them grow less; & tropical trees’ already-short lives are shortening, w/hotter temps; & the freshwater dumped by stronger storms into the seas is giving dolphins ulcerative dermatitis; & the last drought in e. australia shriveled the rivers so bad they’ll likely be a trickle of their former selves -- still, it’s the holidays, season of joy, love, peace, giving, compassion and sucrose. why pine & grieve? or grieve for the pines? let us raise a warm goblet of what- ever, to toast our warming globe, appreciate our loved ones over zoom, and savor the present -- the future is & always was entirely hypothetical
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It really sucks when your refugee camp floods. Idlib province, Syria, Saturday. 1st day of winter: predicted hi: 62 f
yesterday: 52 — winter not what it used to be, tho i will live in the past, the present, and the future! scrooge promises — neat trick, most of us being non- trans-historical by nature this little verse-chronicle deals only in the present, only turns into the past if you let it or read the archives in the mean time, who is being inundated? it is easily told: visayas & mindanao: 9 humans dead, 1600 families affected; n.e. malaysia: 6k displaced; idlib province, syria: “our tents are flooded . . . it’s very chilling”; wales: “deep flooding” w/rivers “fast-flowing & dangerous”; n. australia: “wreaking havoc,” washing away beaches; e. iceland: “deluge of mud & rock” most rain in 5 days ever: 23"; n. japan, in snow: up to 39” not to mention the cleanup in most of e. africa & s. asia the spirits of all three shall strive within me. but in fiji, it was wind not rain: cat 5 cyclone yasa: “entire villages flattened, 7k in shelters while in the arctic, trucks fall through the ice now, & people get stranded on untethered chunks of it: thawing faster than the models predicted! who woulda thunk. the shadows of the things that would have been, may be dispelled! they will be! i know they will! ojala & inshallah -- just wait, it will be like like a miracle like waking up from a bad dream & finding oneself different, trans- formed into someone your present self never would have recognized 2020 on pace to be tied for warmest yr in nederland; driest winter in winnipeg history; hottest, driest ever in arizona (214 bodies along border) forests in s.e. brazil now net co2 emitters; while largest inland fishery (tonle sap lake, cambodia) drying up; 1 million humans s.o.l. but still, the past always comes first, grasping yr elbow, saying, rise! and walk with me! once upon a time, new york city
didn’t get the ft. of snow expected; only 6-10”; but binghampton, n.y. got 40 — half of that in 6 hrs. flat (broke a record — and “broken record” started to sound like a broken record); while minnesota only got ½” for december once upon a time, floridians dreamed of a tornadic christmas -- when 2 twisters hit tampa bay in december: roofs gone, cars flipped, etc. once upon a meantime, ethiopia had a civil war, displacing 50,000 humans, at the same time floods displaced 283,000 more once upon a time, locusts invaded e. africa in the summer; then a cyclone hit & the locusts came back again in the winter, leaving 35m “acutely food insecure” once upon a year, asia-pacific region suffered a record # of natural disasters once upon a single dec. week, a landslide in brazil buried entire families alive; 1000s of humans fled hi water in java, as it submerged their villages; queensland endured record-breaking rainfall on the coast, while in the bush, drought persisted; huge snowdrifts buried niigata prefecture, 1000s of cars stranded on hiways, towns cut off, army mobilized; a cyclone cost fiji 100s of millions of $$$ damage. once upon a time, the animals were in trouble, the water was going away, & the people didn’t know what to do. so they prayed to their gods & . and they lived after. lots of news re: the nor’easter;
nothing on 2nd cat 5 this yr bearing down on fiji -- o, wait — there are two cyclones bearing down -- tonga in the path, too as rainfall records dissolve in australia; snowfall, in japan; as china desperately “seeds” the clouds & in bangla, 50k humans still displaced, villages emptying out, 300k affected by multiple cyclones & mega-monsoon season: “everything is over for us. a natural disaster comes and we become destitute” sez abdus sattar gazi meanwhile the aegean is overflowing into turkey’s 3rd city; tornado in cyprus; wettest yr ever for tennessee valley, topping #2 (2018) & #3 (2019); more red tides on w. coast . . . signs and wonders -- but not god its our genie fires on the taiga fires in the rainforest, on the savannah “the world is getting warmer, & life has to adapt to new conditions. but if the warming continues, many species may have trouble keeping up.” uh . . . yeah -- like homo sapiens -- we’re out of the bottle & we can’t put us back “i’ve seen too many disasters
all over the world, & i’ve never been somewhere struck by 2 hurricanes in 2 weeks,” sez aid worker vlatko uzevski (per n.p.r.) — nov. 3 & 17, eta & iota, for the record -- & honduras still “digs out” from landslides, mudslides, muddy floodsides, muck over everything “bridges, roads, schools, homes, farms, clinics, plazas, & businesses” water system in the north “100% collapsed” (it can’t happen here it can’t happen here it lalalalalalalalalalalalala) last time something like this happened, 10s of 1000s of hondurans migrated to the u. s. of a. for now, 100s of 1000s of humans unhoused & many “crowded into shelters” or homes w/ friends & relatives or sardined into rescue boats, wearing masks or not — covid not @ the front of the mind when the world craters & slides out from under you or slides down on top of you, i guess no quotes from local folks; reporter didn’t know spanish, i guess meanwhile, e. australia lashed by storms; some parts get 18.7” of rain in 24 hrs. (beaches have started to go away); unalleviated alluvion for n. luzon & java (when the deluge swallowed noah’s world, did people on the other side of the world stay dry?) & in tamil nadu, the after- math of cyclone burevi leaves 60% of rice crop water- logged. but rice likes water, no? yeah, at the right time & in the right amount; if not: grain discoloration disease smut ball disease rice blast bacterial leaf blight & all the things the after- math can bring, the things that don’t occur to one to whom it isn’t happening, not yet the human cerebral cortex a-
mazes. soon it will have gotten its owners to a place where it can return to its original function: allowing them merely to survive. which many already merely do. look: here’s a kind of “yr-in-review” article re: 2020 asian floods: china: 2,700,000 humans evac’d nepal: 4,500 landslides bangladesh: ⅓ underwater total: 70m people “affected” (whatever that means) & “75% of india’s districts are hot spots of x-treme climate events” withal. “today, climate and weather- related events account for nearly 9 out of every 10 disasters,” sez the red cross man, & he wd know better than i “humanity is shooting itself in the foot,” the atmospheric scientist sez. it’s that reptile brain that just has 2 settings: freeze and bite! -- only in our case, it has a terrific problem- solving apparatus attached, that allows the alpha humans to take a bite outa the globe (spaykin’ o’ crocs: australia’s spring 2020 hottest on record; no more domestic rice down under, looks like) an’ we’re all heading toward it: ↑3˚ c (37.4 f) by 2100 c.e., sez the u.n., wch makes u feel for those poor 22nd c. folks & not only is homo sapiens the most numerous mammal species; now, biomass weighs in less than human-mass (~1.1 terratonnes), meaning we & our stuff outweigh all the plants and animals on earth (& that doesn’t even include our waste!). some wise men once said “we want our tails back!” that and a collective lobotomy might do the trick sun abandons us
again, fading out on another 68-degree december day in northern kansas how bout this weather i’m warm & malleable both my coats are drying nicely sunset: time to re-lax: no thin ice here no time to think about what’s happening around the azov sea; no time to record the ____est ____ on record; or the missing citizens of little haines, alaska crepuscularity dims attention, so in the after- glow of such a day no wildfire smoke like ventura county has; no deforested areas larger than spain; they said we were in for a dry, warm winter & so far it is -- no snow days no inundations, no mudslides like n.sumatra, like s. thailand, s.iran, no drought, no water shortage like zimbabwe, like namibia, no “trending” — can’t be asked -- no pledges of net zero anything just a vaguely mauvey backlighting of boughs “you have data
we have stories,” sd the anti-vaxxer to the public-health reporter people believe stories b/c stories don’t make you use your brain, alls you have to do is respond item (datum): earth just experienced its hottest nov. on (human) record (please read that again. pause.) then: item (story): “a public letter signed by over 250 scientists and scholars from 30 countries, calls on policy makers to engage more w/ the growing risk of societal disruption and collapse due to damage to the climate and environment.” story: “severe flash floods kill 20 in s. thailand, ½ m humans affected” story: “unremitting torrential rains dis- place 10k humans in aceh province, 17k homes swamped” story: “flooding sinks streets in bushehr & fars province, iran” story: there’s no pill for this, red, blue or any other color story: “cyclone kills 7 in tamil nadu, inundates 300 villages” story: perth, australia woke up last tues. to coldest summer morning in 124 yrs, 44 f; 96 expected today; while the canadian arctic’s in the 50s story: “some armed services already see collapse as an important scenario,” they write, “requiring planning. surveys show many people now anticipate societal collapse. sadly that is already the experience of many communities in the global south. however, the topic is not well reported & mostly absent from civil society & politics.” stories about lack of stories like the story about the birds who stopped migrating years ago. facebook “blocked”
(a.k.a. censored, cancelled) this here verse chronicle, b/c somebody it "includes content that other people on fb have reported as abusive” & of course won’t say what or why (that’s how it works -- i’m joseph h but i feel like josef k i could speculate . . . (too “political”? too much reality?) f.b. offers its own “climate science info center,” where you can read all about it (all the news you need to know) w/lots of articles to choose from (all from u.s., but we’re english-language realityville & nothing lies beyond our shores) speaking of which, juneau, ak. just broke its 24 hr record for rainfall (5.08”), w/ ensuing floods, landslides burying homes, 6 missing, etc. -- & juneau & s.e. alaska suffered drought last year; dec. wildfire in so cal: 25k people evac’d, 6400 acres burned so far (“i got a text message from my neighbor saying, ‘are you okay? your street is on fire’”) no, not o.k. not one bit. meanwhile, in notamerica: 3.7m humans suffered “food insecurity” (meaning “hunger”?) in guatemala, even before the back-to-back cyclones; “we were screwed before the pandemic,” sez 16-yr-old damian ramirez. “& now everything is getting worse”; rainstorm, winds, lightning blaze “trail of destruction” in mozambique; & no rain for a yr in s. madagascar: they can’t even grow cactus fruit; “my children didn’t (they mix eat for 3 days 7 then (white clay died, because i, (with tamarind their mother, (& eat it to did not manage (fill the belly to feed them. i came back in the evening, & i saw the body of my child w/his eyes open” this verse chronicle shd come w/a trigger warning, i guess, but the whole world is a trigger the rain keeps coming: in vietnam, where the crops are ruined; in thailand, where 371k of farmland rots under water; in java, where a 4 ft wall of water rushed down a valley, villagers running away; in split, croatia, where the streets “are mostly underwater” & “heatwaves are killing a record number of people,” sez the economist (mag) but i don’t do long-term trends i don’t do arctic i don’t do animals (you’re welcome) i don’t do hate speech i don’t do porn really, i don’t do politics opec has a fb page; so does exxonmobil; as does american cattlemen. maybe i’ll report them as abusive, since they’ve caused the stuff that stuffs this verse chronicle so why not go to the source & block the whole chaotic mess? the sky is evil
why mourn half-moon shadow crater out-burst from earth warmest-ever fall in moscow, fall in phoenix, nov. in norway drought & deluge “turned into rivers” &c. “have 9 & every time they get sick from malaria no food no good place to sleep” legs swelling from being in water family swept away tourist’s body found # dead, houseless, dollars, 8 hrs to get through she’s trying to get rid of us sd the witch working in temps > 40 c “what a lot of people do” deforestation, rainfall patterns, armed forces stretched thin nature has always wanted us to die dynamic updates of earth’s key data points “it’s not what you wd expect” this water through the roof |
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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. |