deluge then steambath:
torrential rain friday + 70 mph winds (one of the old osage oranges down by the creek broke in 2; trains knocked over in harvey co.), flood warnings, etc.; now heat warnings; i see in the paper where we’re going to be in the “kidney-stone belt”! that’s a new one for me – i knew we were in the bible belt, the wheat belt, the tighten-your-belt belt. but i’d never heard of this. see, when the air turns super hot, you sweat more & urinate less, which means . . . (well, i’ll leave to your imagination the “which means.”) this “by 2050”: that’s as may be. but it’s true kidney disease hits > ¼ of sugar cane cutters in el salvador, which didn’t happen 20 yrs ago; & if you can’t afford dialysis . . . water thieves active in queensland (yep: “water theives”); worse drought ever for sydney, reservoirs running low; (and, yeah, you’re goddam right i’m trying to sow panic – or at the very least a realistic sense of what sort of crisis we’re in for – what “cataclysm”(?). i’m growing nostalgic for rationality.) & meanwhile: in alaska, rivers warmed to 70+ f this summer, meaning dead salmon meaning dead salmon fishery; hottest & smokiest season ever in anchorage (& 94 f last month above arctic circle); in gran canaria, 8k evac’d before conflagration (alexa: synonyms for “wildfire”; synonyms for “flood”); + a new vocabulary word: pyrocumulonimbus – viz., clouds formed by wildfires. double meanwhile, the grand bazaar of istambul flooded; himachal pradesh state clocked highest rainfall ever recorded; chennai, which ran out of water, now engulfed (“empluved”?), tho not enough to end the drought; 1st 6 mo. driest ever in aukland; but august already above-avg. rain; at new orleans, river 11 feet above sea level 292 days (please god not another hurricane right now). and here: triple-digit heat index expected – & we need something more than a three-letter word for what this is
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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. |