Satellite loop from June 18 shows a haze of dust stretching across the Atlantic from Africa to the Caribbean. Image courtesy NOAA. so the question becomes:
why do this? why this chronicle that may or may not add up to anything in the end? & in the meantime is – o.m.G! soooooooooo dePRESSing . . . (i know, right?) hmm. well, i guess it’s experimental writing of a sort: to record data – not trend-lines & graphs but that which appeals to the soul or the gut: when does a problem become an emergency? when do i start to identify w/the thirsty indians? when do i start to fear? moreover some writer or poet or somebody needs to record this, to bear witness (god knows the american media aren’t doing it . . .) to honor the suffering, the deaths, the people who are falling and places that perish – the strangeness of life on earth today & tomorrow while we still have power here – to run computers & to be relatively comfortable by hoovering the rest of the world’s goods i guess. really, i don’t know what else to do & i nurture the wan hope that writing is the way to find out but the reality is that chennai is at 1% of usual water supply (women digging into dried, cracked lakebed); all-time-record highs: maui; kingston, jamaica (saharan dust over the caribbean); lhasa, tibet; several spots in the swiss alps; & germany imposes speed limits on the autobahn (!): the heat forms dangerous cracks (they’re getting saharan dust, too. but it might keep hurricanes down; & it’ll make for some nice sunsets on the east coast) & as continental u.s. has wettest yr on record so far, only state w/extreme drought: alaska wildfires: florida (> 50 sq. mi.); arizona (> 175 squ. mi); germany (near berlin); almost 12,000 this year in amazonia (drought + land clearance); & another snowfall near denver – state snowpack 4,121% ↑ norm – predicted hi 92 f friday flooded fields in corn belt: futures ↑ 30% since mid-may, w/ mozambique, zimbabwe, kenya desperate for imports after cyclones; drought in cotton country; veggies freezing in australia; oranges shriveling in maharashtra; bees in france not making honey submerged docks around lake ontario; 2 mexico-u.s. border crossings closed due to floods (that drowned father & daughter photo . . . ) & diseases: valley fever ↑ 137% / 3 yrs in calif. – fungus spread by duststorms; while lyme exponential in the east: “there is little doubt that it is pandemic,” says mary beth pfeiffer, author of lyme: the first epidemic of climate change. “it’s in china, russia, japan, australia. it’s moving fast into canada. it is all across the u.s.,” due to favorable conditions for tick population explosion (also causing: babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, anaplasmosis, southern tick-associated rash illness, tick-borne relapsing fever, tularemia, colorado tick fever, q fever, rocky mountain spotted fever, & powassan encephalitis). & i shall put on my permethrin- treated clothing and venture out into the back yard to water the plants
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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. |