funny weather
we’ve been having: weird, unnatural — & wonderful! hi mon: 79 / norm: 90 lo mon: 59 / norm: 67; even cooler today + (crucially) lo humidity; if climate change looks like this, count me in! & sometimes i think, just here, it will stay o.k. . . . maybe here, mid-continent, we’ll be the center pivot in the middest of weather wonkiness . . . “things will turn out fine”: what romans said in 409 c.e. & anasazi c. 1280 after the 1st rain in several years . . . do you feel defeated? are we deluded? a little of both? this much we know: peatlands are drying. this is a problem. you know how the irish dry chunks of peat to burn for fuel? well, apparently, that happened in siberia, too, only un- intentionally & over many sq. mi., not just one hearth . . . that is, the ground burns first, then sets trees on fire; why it looks more like lava flows than forest fires; & you know how you can bank a fire to keep it smoldering through the night? the same is true of tundra: peat in the ground is already hella banked; hence smoke rising out of snow in winter & “zombie fires” springing to life in spring. those poor siberians, we think. poor caribou, too. poor everybody: peat = carbon; burning = oxidation; burning peat = co2. lots and lots of it. (peat fires are mighty smoky) at least one candidate in our local elections today sez something re: prepping for climate crisis . . . maybe it’s trickling down, but not fast enough: heat records all over spain, s. france; most active atlantic hurricane season-to-date ever recorded; rainfall across australia ↓ 43% in july; china corn future price ↑ 30% (floods in s., drought in n., virus resurgent); & it seems everywhere that flooded last week is flooded more, this week. but weather news only tells you so much, for “the only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen & what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything,” & “it is perfectly simple that there is no reason why the contemporaries should see, because it would not make any difference as they lead their lives,” and if what you are doing doesn’t make you see things differently or prevents you from seeing differently, then you will not see differently, & it will not change how you lead your life. q.e.d. (w this proviso: it may change life per se)
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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. |