Short and Sweet

   The wind continued through the night, the sort of flap-your-hanging-laundry-around wind as if it had escaped from the highlands of Scotland or the wild coast of Ireland.*  But this was a dry wind, a desert wind that was constant, it's heat pulling moisture from the leaves of the trees and they were listening, the scrub oak dropping their acorns by the thousands and the leaves turning a reddish brown as if not having enough water to fully present their usual fall display.  And one would have thought that with such a wind, such a constant wind, that our sky would have returned to its color, that azure blue that is so present and so common that one never even thinks about it until it is suddenly no more, as if watching the ocean turn a permanent green.  But with the winds came the fires, their drying power only adding to the lack of rain, the grasses and trees just tinder for the slightest spark whether natural or caused by a human, deliberately or accidentally.  And the fires came, filling the air with enough smoke to cross many state lines and to continue their own journey; you could smell it on some days, the acrid odor of life caught up with death as people and animals ran from the tsunami of heat.  For the plants, rooted in their home, there was no escape, and the fires moved across the world...almost as quickly as the water.

    Hurricane season is upon us, the rising waters from glaciers melting now lifting the wind-blown waters ever farther inland, the warmer ocean temps slowing down the pace and path of their respective destruction.  At 8 miles per hour, the devastating winds were moving at the speed of a human quickly jogging; and then they slowed to 2 miles per hour, about the pace of a slow walk.  70 mph, then 80, then 120.  Homes and hillsides didn't have a chance as whatever withstood the wind soon fell victim to the relentless rain.  In Hawaii, it was 30 inches of rain while in North Carolina is was closer to 40.  In the Philippines and Hong Kong, the numbers were off the chart.

    Sometimes I read some of this in the news and just don't understand.  I marvel, of course, but don't comprehend.  In Antarctica there are still glaciers and ice sheets that are double the size of the state of Texas, says National Geographic, and they are melting...two, three, nine times the normal rate; and as the front sheets break off, the weight of glacier is following (think of removing a chock block from under the tire of a heavy vehicle parked on a hill).  And scientists are finding that much of this is happening under the ice, perhaps more so than on top, the warmer ocean waters eating away the bottom of these huge sheets as easily as a spatula.

   Then there is the decimation hitting the pork industry as China begins the culling of millions of its farm-raised pigs, a virus that first reappeared in Luxembourg and another parts of Europe (in Romania one hog farmer was brought to tears as his 600,000 pigs had to be euthanized almost in a group many of them still bulging with piglets), then another version arriving in Japan, and quite possibly, a later mutated version waiting for arrival in the U.S.  And it all came from Africa (pigs in Africa?).  Of course, the world pays little attention until it begins hitting the pocketbook or the health of the everyday person...which could be right around the corner for what generally follows a swine virus is the jump to humans in the form of influenza (a case has already been reported).

   Was it climate change, the waters warming along with the atmosphere?  Here's the take from the New Yorker: Throughout the Northern Hemisphere this summer, heat waves have been shattering records and sustaining wildfires of unprecedented fury.  In Greece last week, ninety-one people died in a hellish fire --Europe’s deadliest since 1900-- that broke out eighteen miles east of Athens and, powered by unusually dry vegetation and strong winds, blazed across a resort town on the Aegean Sea.  On July 17th, in Sodankylä, Finland, more than fifty miles north of the Arctic Circle, the thermometer read a previously unseen ninety degrees; in Sweden, wildfires swept across Lapland; in Norway, there have been three times more wildfires this summer than normal.  In much of Germany, drought conditions have persisted since May, the Rhine is dangerously low, and authorities in the city of Potsdam, outside Berlin, were afraid last week that a wildfire burning around the nearby small town of Fichtenwalde would set off Second World War–era ammunition that remains buried in the area’s forest and meadows.  In the United Kingdom, the first half of summer has been the driest on record.  There was more from the magazine, the September 10th issue adding (in a commentary on how the U.S. administration will roll back regulations and thus allow even more greenhouse gas emissions): In Japan a heat wave resulted in at least eighty deaths, and in South Korea record-breaking temperatures were blamed for twenty-nine deaths...But perhaps what's most scary about this scorching summer is how little concerned Americans seem to be.  So far, climate change has barely registered as an issue in the midterm elections...

    There is much I don't understand and much I still marvel at, such as reading that hummingbirds have a resting heartbeat of 500 beats per minute, which jumps to 1200 beats per minute when in full action.  Or this from Bob Berman's book on motion, Zoom, "Nothingness has inherent energy, and lots of it.  According to current theory an empty mayonnaise jar has enough energy to boil away the Pacific Ocean in less than a second.  This so-called vacuum energy, or zero-point energy, pervades the cosmos.  Thus seeming nothingness seethes with power.  And whatever it is, it grows bigger and bigger."  One example?  Scientists still can't explain that halfway through the life of our universe (or some six billion years sgo), the speed of the galaxies expanding away from us suddenly increased "as if they all had rocket engines that suddenly ignited."

    Losing a parent is tough, if expected at some point when they reach a certain age.  Bones get more brittle, the mind wanders a bit; but still you expect them to keep going, to keep being your mother or your father.  And it still comes as a shock when they are simply not there anymore, even when it is simply time that has caught up with them.  But no matter the age, it makes one wonder.  For those of us left living there is still so much to try and comprehend, to learn, to balance, and to grow.  But it is admittedly puzzling, at least for me.  So this is a roundabout way of saying that if it seems that for some reason there is a slight gap in these posts it will be because I will have boarded something else which I don't understand, a metal object that weighs nearly a hundred tons and yet will effortlessly carry me across an ocean, all while I watch movies or read or even doze off for a bit.  It is time for me to pause and clear some of the many thoughts that have buzzed around me like flies, to maybe process those events that have caused me to question even more; maybe after all that has happened  I'm meant to learn to question less, not more, to understand by not understanding.  It will be a change this getaway, another change, for life has recently seen change come aplenty to both me and my wife.  Change is good, as they say, even if it might be as simple as arriving in a different currency.


*Then again, perhaps we're watching too many episodes of series such as Shetland and Single-Handed.