post-solstice dog days – days
shortening, earth farther from sun, but hotter than any other time of year: from the cool evening, come in, go to the hot attic, & you will understand global warming (or, as we used to say, the greenhouse effect); or sit in a closed car on a warm day & be very hot we live on a planet apparently on the ground: here: friday brought straight-line winds, uprooted trees, manhole covers blurped off their manholes by the force of swelling water & i spent much of the weekend breaking, stuffing, and sawing (this could get old, but quick); tx., ok., ark., mo. also hit again, as was the e. coast (i’m tired of counting flight cancellations); k.c. got a year’s worth of rain in six months; “this planting-delay issue, because of what states it has affected . . . historically important for market direction.” & planting delays, flooding in argentina, too . . . meaning: get ready to pay more at the grocery store (corn prices rise to five- year high and counting); belleville, il: - debris and damage reporting tools - recovery resources - mental health helpline - road/travel updates* - co. emerg. mgmt. contacts . . & our poor state parks, holding on by a shoestring, now have to refund fees of washed-out campers – this w/ “mountains of debris” to remove; meanwhile utqiagvik, alaska, northernmost u.s. town, topped its all-time record hi (in its warmest year on record), @ 80 f (which was also the hi yesterday in lawrence, ks); & i read that more canadian armed forces deployed for domestic climate disasters than overseas, their numbers “probably too small to deal with all of the tasks"; no training in climate catastrophe; this w/canada warming 2x faster than rest of world; speaking of which: they look like roaches swarming a piece of moldy bread but are cattle photo’d from the air, hundreds crowding a single watering point (new s. wales – having driest year in 160); “workers within office environments are not safe considering the record heat wave experienced in kuwait,” but “employees should try to compose themselves regardless of the situation & avoid conflicts as much as they can”; record highs for date: - miami - honolulu - anchorage (w/extreme drought) highest on record for any day ever: - delhi (earlier this mo.) india: “80% of the country’s 91 major reservoirs have below- normal storage” (fish floating in clumps or hi & dry); in fact, 11 reservoirs have no water at all”: planting delayed there, too; & the villagers queue up two days in advance for water, but when the trucks come, only half get it: “there is no rain, so there is no work on farmlands, and no money, so how can we afford water?” 10-yr-old riding train to fetch water: “i don’t like doing this, but my mother says we have no choice” – “don’t blame the hand of God,” sayeth the court (to the govt.), “what did the hand of the man do?” all this as reservoirs overflow in wuhan, china – as do roads & subways after flooding; “the city needs a plan to mitigate and adapt to climate change,” says lawrence-douglas co. sustainability director jasmin moore; yes we do but we avoid conflict as much as we can ________ * For a complete list of the 14 flood-related road closures in and around Belleville, IL & metro-east St. Louis area, see: https://www.bnd.com/news/local/article231881163.html
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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. |