it sez here optimists live
2 yrs longer than pessimists, which makes sense: what will those extra 2 yrs be like? would you really want to live them if you knew? but this is america, where you’re either a doomer (bad), or a pollyanna (good), both of which imply you can know the future -- or can believe whatever you want about it, regardless of evidence & reason. it’s how we roll. we also like to be #1, but turns out, we’re only #2: jan.-june 2020 only the second hottest 1st half on record (2016 beat us, darn it!) but think it’s turning into a long hot summer in portland, oregon? well, you’re right: just hit all-time hi-lo: 78 f overnight (hotter than here in steamy n.e. ks.); & d.c. just hit 90 for 26 days in a month (another first); & if you think that’s bad, try baghdad: 125 f yesterday: hottest temp ever recorded in that very hot city — plus everything else they’ve got going on . . . like they say, when it rains it pours -- speaking of which: mumbai has already had it’s wettest month ever, this july: 58” (we’ve had 4.38” here) . . . fifty-eight inches of rain in twenty-eight days . . . in fact, feels like it’s raining all over the world: chongqing is turning into a lake; 130k house- less in yemen; more flooding in japan (this time n. kyushu); n.e. mexico hit by hanna; streets waist-hi in water in karachi; monsoons still submerging houses in assam; raging rivers in the streets of dhaka; oil wells submerged in uganda; houses swept away in nigeria; (no word from georgia last night) meanwhile, the extent of forest fires in russia doubled over the past week, to 168 k acres (re-read that last stanza, please) & in southern africa, 45 m now “food insecure” (up 10% from last year), due to drought, floods, virus; & it makes me wonder what would it mean to be a “realist,” nowadays?
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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. |