my friends in healdsburg
aren’t in healdsburg anymore – they’re headed to stay with friends in oregon, fleeing the californian flames, two of the 180k evac’d – hurricane-force winds + wildfire = firestorm less contained than yesterday; 85 sq. mi. burned so far; another 2.7 m w/o power; this the 3rd “diablo wind” this week – something weather service fore- casters in the region said they “have no memory of” occurring before: well, duh – none of this has ever occurred to anyone before – had never occurred to anyone that it could happen – but angelinos’ commute disrupted by smoke on their freeways?! & lebron evac’d!! what is going on?? (human remains in the ashes in the hills . . . ) meanwhile, here crop yields are above avg. in douglas co.! despite the floods; our temps have been near norm (60s hi, 40s lo) – tho coldstorm moving in, with hi’s in 40s lo’s in lower 30s (what is it they say? winter is coming? no, they say what the hell is going on), w/ jet stream carrying tropical warmth, swings up thru the arctic, heating it up, then barrels straight down rockies w/cold, as far as so. cal. (no wonder the winds are bad), then a sharp left, blasting the midwest and northeast – not a “vortex” but a maelstrom a bad storm – 76 on sat. in denver; 18 this a.m. meanwhile, japan pummeled by another tropical storm, more rain, more dead (10): “i’ve had enough of this, and i need a break," sez one chiba resident, as elsewhere people swept away, landslide-buried ("there was enormous noise and impact, 'boom' like an earthquake, so i went outside. then look what happened. i was terrified. . . . rain more intense than typhoons”) elsewhere, it’s summer, & volunteers truck water into queensland stix where they’ve almost run out; indonesia records hottest temp ever; & in s. africa, “almost a million people w/o water . . . eastern cape a disaster zone, reducing farmers to penury and despair, sending food prices soaring...”; & pakistani farmers seek a declaration of emergency, as their cotton, rice, corn wither, get eaten by bugs. meanwhile, floods in dry places: saudi arabia (7 dead); tanzania (44 dead); spain (8); egypt (11 people dead); floods displace 900 k persons in s. sudan, w/ “extreme levels of acute malnutrion” caused by floods since july, & “diseases spreading w/ contaminated water. access to hygiene and sanitation limited, especially for women and girls.” & this right here might be the only monument to the destruction of the week, as folks need to run or fight, not write, as the angel of history blows outa here, facing us, blowing us a kiss, saying, “so long, suckers!”
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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. |