today, in the united states, we celebrate
“black friday,” so called b/c so many folks buy so much stuff that it puts businesses “in the black” on their balance sheets. it opens the season of mammonmas, when we celebrate our principal deity, Consumption. we avoided the explosion of the bomb cyclone farther north, but it is raining, so be careful driving yr s.u.v., lest you become a human sacrifice (have you ever noticed most people driving s.u.v.’s don’t know how to drive their s.u.v.’s?) anyway, the hi was 14 degrees below the norm yesterday, the lo, 2 degrees above; rain in nov., 0.55” / norm, 2.05” yr to date: 45.61” / norm, 36.95” the new normal = no normal, no pattern in e. africa, the new normal = devastation, apparently: 2 yrs worth of rain hammers djibouti in one day (let that sink in . . .) rain in the horn of africa this year = 300% above normal; death toll in kenya rises to 120 (60 last weekend) in slides & floods, 18,000 people displaced; 5,000 in 2 villages cut off for days; “life here is terrible because we don’t have money, because if someone had their money in the house it was all swept away by the floods”; local dr. wonders what’s next: “is it wounds, is it children who are coming up with pneumonia, is it diarrheal illnesses” meanwhile, farther south, drought: 2/3 of crops fail in botswana, + 40,000 cattle die: “the goats died, as well as the cattle, as you can see the carcasses all over”; & the cattle compete for what little water there is w/hippos and elephants (100s of whom have died, too); so check in: is this making you angry, or sad? have you already ceased to read?; in zimbabwe, “even if a person’s farm was not damaged by the cyclone in march, the drought makes it very hard for them to feed their families,” sez the village elder. “most people’s only sources of income are their vegetable gardens and livestock, and without water both will die.” & if they survive, still no money left for medicine or school or meanwhile, on the yankton sioux rez in s. dakota, groundwater seeps into houses & blooms of mold keep bursting forth, no matter how much bleach you use: “it’s ruined all our stuff, everything stinks, my eyes hurt, we’ve all been sick, it can’t be legal to leave us living like this”; cyclone after cyclone, drying lake now flooding lake, outlet underwater, sewage plant neared collapse; “the climate is changing, it’s already snowing in montana, and if we have another wet winter & spring, there will be devastation, we’ll have to be evacuated,” sez the tribal official; & meanwhile, those of us who are hi & dry & live, w/o a putrid smell in our homes making it hard to breathe, are walking off our big thanksgiving dinners at the mall, ignoring as much as we can, enjoying our private lives at the moment, imagining & extrapolating a similar tomorrow; & when the s.h.t.f. & w.t.f. moments arrive, we’ll all raise our voices as one & say “how come nobody did nothin?” b/c nobody did; nobody still isn’t [PS – Don’t forget – 1 week from today (Dec. 6) – the next climate strike. Don’t work, don’t go to class, ideally take a bus or bike to protests, & don’t buy more stuff.]
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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. |