Ávila, Spain, Tuesday (that sign says 10 degrees, in American). Raúl Sanchidrián/EFE via El País. beware the ides of
january . . . maybe . . . do people turn violent & irrational b/c deep down they know the earth is going haywire? & they don’t want to admit it? take the “forever drought” (pls): great swaths of the w. u.s. burned; even bigger swaths cracking & crinkling in “exceptional drought” after 20 yrs of little precip; a “non-soon” 2020 + la niña 2021 = bad-news spring & summer . . . battles over water might get literal; & if you want to deny it’s even happening, you might blame it on something else, blame it on someone else in any case, “temperatures are not going back to what they used to be,” sez the climate scientist; the water “scarcity problem is not going away” & folks in turkey are nodding, saying, “mm-hm, i know that’s right”: 86 f at night (hotter than a mid- summer’s night); istambul w/45 days of water left -- even as it’s flooding farther south (this is all happening pretty quickly, as it turns out) ↓ water = ↓ food = ↑ food prices = ↑ poverty = ↑ migration to cities = ↑ demand for water (& it works the same for too much water) in s. madagascar, 1.3 m humans need food assistance; rainy season didn’t rain (only 1 day in dec.); when it did, t’storms blasted crops; + no jobs due to covid; 75% of kids foraging: “cactus mixed with mud, roots, what- ever they can find, leaves, seeds, whatever is available.” meanwhile, in snowbound madrid, covid patients get rides to hospital in 4-wheel-drives of volunteers; in cañada real, “europe’s largest shanty town” (pop 8.5k), 7 mi. from downtown madrid, no water (pipes frozen), no electricity (power co. shut off, citing theft); “we’re seeing children with chilblains b/c their hands have been destroyed by the cold, and respiratory infections,” sez the doctor; the authorities “can sleep in my house and suffer & live what we’re living,” sez the resident; “maybe then they’d do something.” u.a.e. has its coldest jan. ever; record-breaking cold in hong kong; malta has warmest jan. day ever; record rain in n. australia (in the 100s on the e. & w. coasts); record rain in 2020 for lancashire; & here’s an abstruse stat: highest december lows in athens since 1860 — meaning, it isn’t cooling down at night; it’s the hi-lo’s that get you & the oceans: 2020 marked the hottest temps ever (hence the cyclones); & the arctic: not many temp gauges up there -- if there were, 2020 might well have won the prize surely the second coming is at hand -- or at least some equally simple answer: like a minority to blame that’s not the untouchable 1%, who really are to blame; or an angrier sun, chinese hoaxes, satan-worshipping pedophiles (they’d be easy to blame). suffice to say there are plenty of highs & lows left to come in the overheated human brain
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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. |