Big yellow taxi

Effective tomorrow, our days will be 20 minutes shorter than they were on the Solstice and daylight will continue to shrink until we reach and pass the Winter Solstice. Have you noticed the loss? For many, probably most of US, natural cycles are largely incidental to the significant aspects of our lives, especially if we work a 9 to 5, 5 day a week job. Joni Mitchell wrote and performs a song (Big Yellow Taxi) prescient for these times. It includes the refrain:

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot 

storm clouds on the horizon

Photo by J. Harrington

I've been retired for some years now and have tried to become more aware of and sensitive to seasonal changes, but I don't get out fishing and hunting as much as I used to, am not really a gardener nor a forager, and am only indirectly dependent on nature for many of life's necessities. Yes, this weekend's Canadian wildfire smoke is a threat to breathing fresh air but it should be gone by tomorrow and, other than staying inside, there's not much I can do about it. We depend on our private well for drinking, cooking, and bathing water and have it tested a couple of times a year for hardness. We had a comprehensive test some years ago and there's no obvious local source of nitrates nor are there babies in the house anymore so we rarely follow the Health Department's testing recommendations.

In our county, we get siren alarms when there are severe thunderstorms. The house is outside the current 100 year flood plain. I'm not sure when, how or if climate breakdown will prompt a redelineation or the identification of a 500- or 1000-year flood plain. We lack the Texas' Hill Country's history of flash flooding so ....

Much of the preceding has been prompted by the July 4th disaster in Texas and my growing concern about the continuing lack of effective response to the IPCC warnings about continued emission of greenhouse gases and the effects on our weather/climate. In my opinion, recent actions by Congress and the current regime smack of malfeasance in light of the risks and threats to the safety and security of the country's population and future. Have we all become Texans in spirit?

Let Them Not Say

by Jane Hirshfield

Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say: they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something:

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.

—2014

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