so it’s not just me:
other teachers report students’ feeling exceptionally depressed, anxious, melting down more than ever before, than last year, disappearing, or lashing out at peers, at profs, at whomever is handy. just more apocalyptic thinking, i know i know – the wailing and gnashing of teeth part of the program. but debt, budget cuts, shitty jobs (and lots of ‘em), more course hours than human(e)ly possible, pressure to extracurricularize, peer pressure to do whatever, tuition hikes, election looming, president tweeting civil war . . . and o yeah the world is coming to an end (or worse, will just keep going the way it’s going til the end of time or capitalism, whichever comes first or they are both the same thing). rotten memes on such a lovely fall day! a moment of “normal” to cherish forever. if you live where i do, right now. meanwhile floods in central nigeria (18 dead) floods in karnataka (12 dead) floods in cairo (≥ 8 dead, 4 kids) flash floods in kenya (4 kids dead – the bulldozer with the girl’s body) floods in the pyrenees (1 dead) hagibis death toll in japan at 84 & 1/3 of pakistan’s cotton crop is toast; & water level historically ↓ in jiangxi; & in australia, the darling river (their mississippi) is running dry, “reduced to a string of stagnant mustard- coloured pools, fouled in places with pesticide runoff and stinking with the rotting carcasses of cattle and fish”; while along our mississippi, more rain more rain, and more flooded corn crops; heatwave in miami, heatwave in l.a. (disneyland hotter than death valley); heatwave in zimbabwe, in the 100s f, & elephants dying from drought, as you know, humans not far behind . . . & honolulu had 213 record-breaking or -tying hi’s since april, no end in sight; that tornado in dallas costs insurance co.’s $2 billion; & researchers say 1 in 4 u.s. bridges’ expansion joints will fail with higher temps; moreover, scombroid poisoning from fish in alaska (heart palpitations, headaches, blurry vision, gastrointestinal distress): “it was pretty warm this summer, maybe people had a harder time keeping their fish cold” up in alaska; & sonoma co., calif. burns again: 10k acres + no containment: it’s starting again. meanwhile, power companies cut the juice again, to almost ½ million, to prevent more igniting. “it’s scary for a lot of people,” sez healdsburg mayor david hagele. “my daughter was scared this morning.” we all need to get used to more scared kids and grandkids, and college students, b/c it’s not going to get less scary from here on out. so don’t just stand there do something. but what. some young folks join sunrise, some shout people down or self-destruct somewhere in the collective climate unconscious, a voice is telling us we may not do anything we don’t want to do but we will have to do things we do not want to do in a while. andrew yang says people aren’t thinking about climate change, they’re thinking about bread & butter; maybe he’s not thinking about climate change b/c maybe millionaire he doesn’t have to worry about bread & butter or floods & droughts
2 Comments
Terry
10/24/2019 10:38:59 pm
Ah now I see. You re actively still blogging. But your archives only go through July so I cannot see later posts. Help!
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Joe
10/25/2019 07:44:28 am
Thanks for pointing that out, Terry! Aug-Oct was invisible. I cut the text on the "Author" part to make more room for the Archives. Hopefully that'll work.
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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. |