The reign of rain

Well, we now know what it’s like to be the recipient of almost 3.5 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. Just to our west, and again to our south, reported amounts were less than a half inch and a little more than an inch, respectively. One might almost begin to believe the weather has become hyper-volatile, almost as if we were experiencing anthropogenic climate change, but Americans would have to be hyper-gullible enough to vote for a known con man as POTUS, believing that someone inept enough to bankrupt a casino is actually a successful business man, for that to happen, right?

this driveway was dry a few hours ago

Photo by J. Harrington

Anyhow, after our overnight deluge, we were visited this morning by a couple of whitetail bucks with antlers in velvet, a doe, a fawn who has lost its spots, and a flock of half a dozen or so turkey hens, but no poults that we could see. Yet another example of feast or famine? Each day there are hours and hours with no signs of wildlife in the fields behind the house other than the birds coming to the feeders. Some seasons, like late autumn through deep winter, there are weeks and months with little, if any, views of critters other than at the feeders.

By this point in the summer last year, we had had almost a couple of dozen days in the 90’s. This year there’s been two. There’s only one more in the ten day forecast. Which year should we consider “normal,”  or dow we average the two as normal? I think I’m trying to raise the issue of times of tempestuous change make it difficult to establish a new baseline that we can at least consider “normal.” Even if meteorologists use something like a 30 year rolling average for some factors, if we continue to experience the “hottest day on record,” year after year, that’s not going to tell us what humans used to consider normal before we created the Anthropocene. We all need to do more to keep context in mind. For more, check shifting baseline.

to the orange still green

Patty Seyburn

Your desire for metamorphosis heard and filed away:
frustration noted, conveyed to proper authorities,
soil and rain. Issues of identity never so labored as today.
I have heard, however, if you hail from Valencia,

it’s quite normal, and as far as dye—why would you
tamper with natural beauty in search of convention, 
in this state where the prophetic sun anoints every
being? Merely for the sake of reinvention?

O Orange, unmatchable trochee except by slant,
by dint of the imagined word, yet to be created,
word of a new world, green world, seamless sphere
content, unbruised by fear of being belated,

join the trend—shed your insecurity, take pride
in the mother country, Brazil, in the year yours arrived
here, 1873, planted by the future scions of Riverside.
Rumor has one of three founding trees still alive,

and that could be your branch, your seed—while my kin
found themselves in Jersey City, trying their damndest 
                                             to speak American.

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