Northern Madagascar from space, before & after recent muddy flooding everybody’s overwhelmed
by their own crises -- nobody has time for the world’s until the world’s becomes their own like in australia: highest temps ever in tasmania; while s. central port lincoln submerges; wildfires creeping towards the capital . . . while over yonder in belo horizonte, brazil, n. of rio, it’s the wettest month in history: 5” in 3 hrs., 60 dead, 47k displaced; “we saw a wall of water that swept away cars & people. luckily i was able to rescue everyone & i carried 3 or 4 of them on my back.” while chile declares emergency in flooded north, sends in army to help; in sumatra, 9 dead from drowning or hit by logs swept along by the current; 1000s in temporary shelters & in madagascar, abnormal rainfall submerges towns, cattle, grain — all lost -- > 100k people displaced meanwhile “in angola, girls of 12 sell themselves for as little as the cost of a loaf of bread” (worst drought in 40 yrs); 71 k in lesotho “1 step away from famine”: “we can’t plant any crops in this drought. we have no livestock left to sell or exchange for grain. so, unless we get help, we are just going to starve” & 7.7 m need urgent food aid in zimbabwe; 34k cattle dead; a different meaning to the term “food desert” which for us here means figuring out how to get yr groceries back to yr home we look at pictures from the 30s as though they’re from a different planet, as though some cosmic shift happened that means it can’t happen here, history can’t repeat, w/ its dustbowls & dictators, its stukas and starving . . .
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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. |