No Promise of Tomorrows

 One of the challenges of mortality is balancing preparing for tomorrow and living life today because tomorrow is never promised.

If I absolutely knew I would have no tomorrow, I would be home playing with my babies, doggies, soaking up every ray of sunshine, taking one last sweet shot of sex with my hubby. I would drop all worries and go for comfort and experience, squeezing every golden drop I could from the last rays of light, and feel gratitude for the life I have had. I'd tell my children "Tomorrow, we go home to Christ."

Somedays, as the world tilts more into making tomorrow less likely, you begin to question the drive we have to carry on, as if nothing unusual is happening. Especially when that drive seems to eclipse both the actual preparation for tomorrow and the living life today.

Why go to work, go to school, when it reduces my current joy nor prepares me for what tomorrow will most likely bring? Why are we so good at pretending that tomorrow will just be another today?

This is a collective pretending. If enough of us pretend, it generally works, unless a disaster of man or nature actually befalls us, today will lead into tomorrow and be mostly normal. But as soon as enough of us stop pretending, it will fall apart. The lack of pretending tomorrow is normal will actually allow tomorrow not to be normal.

This is a two-edged sword. We do need tomorrow to be different if we want any hope of having enough resources to prepare for the future if we want to forge it into a liveable shape, but we also need tomorrow to be the same enough that we can use our current skill set to get things done as we prepare for the future.

Therefore, I submit the following advice (to myself)

1. Carrying on is important, but not in the "everything is normal" category, it has to be a carrying on that is designed to create a tomorrow we can/want to have.

2. This requires a focus shift. Stop pretending. Willingly acknowledge that tomorrow ought to be different. Figure out how you want it different and make plans how to get there. Ideally, our leaders should be doing this on a local, state, national, and worldwide scale. They are failing because big business requires our collective pretending. Without large-scale leadership, you will have to forge the best you can with whatever community you can join with. Find that community. Start plans and prepare.

3. Accept that you might have work to bring in the money you need to prepare for tomorrow ( and yes, paying your bills counts here). While you are working, you may have to pretend all is normal to do your job, or maybe your job is help prepare your work for this future we want to forge.

She sang

 "Prepare, oh prepare"

she sang as she planted her garden

 "Prepare, oh prepare"

she sang as she hung her solar panels

"Prepare, oh prepare"

She hummed as the wildfire smoke made her eyes tear

That wasn't fun

plague and earthquakes elsewhere were enough

but for it to come home

that was not fun

But she ate her saurkraut

as the world burned around here

tried to stay grounded 

doing daily chores,

 of which there were never any lack

New she sang songs of redemption

as she hung on

waiting through the dark

waiting for the light

Daughter of Zion-Two Thousand Twenties

 Will I sit back and laugh when the world burns?

tired of sadly shaking my head

   hide my face from the heat

    singe the hairs of my hands?

or turning and walking away?

run

tired of the heat

   petty games of blame

   finger pointing

am I carrying the buckets all alone?

 one spot of green left

wet my plants

  wet my pants

Sitting on the curb, 

ash falls around

I long for the cold shower

the fuller's soap

To stand clean from the filth of this time

filth of the times that have brought us to this

too many have sold themselves

turned  natural beauty into plastic

earth and soul

to be redeemed 

 a power

 I, alone, do not possess

What do we do now?

 I knew how to handle the lockdown, but now I am wondering how to handle the air quality alerts. Northern Minnesota is not the place to live if you don't like fresh air, trees, and sunshine. I survived the lockdown by being outside, but now being outside hurts. It's not just solved by wrapping my face in a scarf and not breathing the 40 below air directly into my lungs. The smoke/extreme heat is different. 

Yes, I have learned to wear a facemask while outside, and I have found several soothing things to do for my poor little throat,  but my eyes still sting, even in a building. And I am so tired of the confuffphany of fans and filters, instead of open windows with happily chirping birds or the soothing sounds of frogs at night.

This feels like a vicious circle, caused by climate change and causing more climate change. The windows are closed, even though it's cooler outside than the last 10 days, the A/C is on, the fans are on, the dryer is running because I cannot wash clothes just to dry them in smoke....

And I can't cook, as adding heat to a house that is barely cool enough to live in is a no-no. 

The seas are boiling

Large methane leaks in the arctic sea .... cause so much gas to rise to the surface that the seas look like they are boiling. https://desdemonadespair.net/2019/10/russian-scientists-find-giant-methane-fountains-in-arctic-ocean-this-is-the-most-powerful-seep-i-have-ever-been-able-to-observe.html

Naturally, it is hidden deep in the news.

A plague of locus hits Texas- (don't have the link to that right now)

What will it be like when the seas turn to blood? Will Nestle continue to bottle it?

we wait

We are staying up late,
waiting for that cool of the night to make it possible for us to sleep
But it doesn't come
It is September
and the cool doesn't come

air thick
humid
a blanket smothering our desire to act

we want to breathe
to move
to hear the birds and crickets chirp

but it doesn't come

we wait

will next week reach the promised lows?

or do I pull out my summer clothes once more

Surfin' the Web (nostalgia attack)

I remember the days when we could spend hours going from one interesting link on the internet to another. Ah, when the web was young (and so was I). The web was full of amazing ideas and discussions and little communities built up around particular interests and you could actually have conversations with people in comment sections, and because it required a little bit of self-education to get on and surf the web most posters treated each other as equals and conversations remained polite and kind (at least the groups I participated in.)

What brought on this nostalgia attack? A nice little article dating from the year 2000. I bought my first HTML book in 1997. At that time I used the internet for meeting men to date and communicating with my parents.  Interestingly, Rebecca Blood dates the first 23 blogs to 1999. Trying to remember what the web was like back when I had my first baby, who now could be in college, is the reason for the nostalgia attack. It was before 9/11 changed the world. But after I met my husband online, and after my college went to 100% online course registration and required everyone to check their school given email addresses weekly.

I remember one school paper on Hamlet that I didn't have enough source materials for, so I went to the web and ended up quoting some of the work a high school English class put up. It satisfied the teacher, although there were no conventions on citing it yet.

Rebecca Blood points out "These weblogs provide a valuable filtering function for their readers. The web has been, in effect, pre-surfed for them. Out of the myriad web pages slung through cyberspace, weblog editors pick out the most mind-boggling, the most stupid, the most compelling." This is one of my favorite reason for the blogs I frequented, most had pre-selected, or even curated a selection of news or articles that were important to me, mostly on subjects of ecology, economy, and midwifery. I even have a section on this blog where I summarize a book on global warming called 6 Degrees. As overwhelming as a change of 6 degrees seemed at the time, there is no doubt we are living through a lot of it now. 

I also agree with Rebecca's conclusion, some of the most valuable things the internet does is to allow the little guy a voice, whether it is inside view of a war zone or a sting to corporate media it is what the world needed then, and still needs now.

Soul Sucking

It is always fun, in a soul sucking way, to  meet with our financial advisers. Part of the fun is the fact that we have spent (and continue to spend) the vast majority of our time and energies raising our children. Among our 7 beautiful additions to this world are 3 that have special needs. Yes, we deal with autism, ODD, spinal bifida, mood disorders, the terrible twos and the dreaded teenagers on a daily basis.

 They suggest we hire outside help for the children so we can go and get a career. (Even if we don't break even on costs of career income minus a tutor for our children). Le Sigh... Of course that often seems to be kin to a major sin to refuse to perpetuate a broken system that values your contributions out of your home more then the contributions within your home.  Of course, when you make your money out of the stock and bonds system, anything that grow the economy is good for you. So if I get a job, and have to hire my job out and then drive through on the way hone because I am too tired to cook. It all adds to the economy (as it is counted), but subtracts from what matters most to me, my family. It just doesn't seem logical to do so. When I consider this scenario, I hear a life sucking sound, where all my efforts go to building someone else's coffers and not the one things that truly matter.

Everything we do is for our children. I just wish it could make a difference in the longevity of the world. Sometimes, other times I kinda look towards heaven and wish the end of the world to hurry up. But maybe that should be part of my equation. What good is a career and investments in financial markets when the world ends?

With what time we may or may not have left on the planet, should I not also consider that the economy as we know it perpetuates the destruction of the world? Without the desires for increased wealth would we not have made better decisions as a country or world? Would we not have possibly considered that we can't breathe soot or drink liquid coal and put tons of CO2 into the atmosphere with no consequences?

Seriously folks... you are worried about my retirement plan, instead of if there will be a world to retire on?

PS- I don't plan on retiring, I plan on working and building and learning and teaching and creating as much positive in the world as I can all the days of my life. I plan to prepare for the changes ahead and to ride through them with my family.

Hot and sticky

Last night I was so hot and sticky I felt like Roo had eaten a lollipop and then rubbed his hands all over me.

And today was so hot- I had to bake a birthday cake in it- you might as well liquify me and spray me directly on the furniture.

Six degrees- 1 degree

I am on strike this week (as mom). SO instead of washing their clothing (that they refuse to bring down to the laundry room) or cooking their dinner (that they refuse to wash up after) I will be spending more time blogging, and this week's topic is a chapter by chapter summery of the book "Six Degrees" by Mark Lynas.

Today's Chapter is 1 degree. What would happen were the average global temperature of the planet rose 1 degree?

Massive droughts in California, the great plains and other "breadbasket" areas, change in global climate patterns. Loss of coral reefs, ice free artic, monsoons in Africa, loss of glaciers and glacial drinking waters, drastic changes in weather patterns, mountains held together by permafrost melting and flowing down, extinction of Pikas (small furry baby bunny like mammals),

"Hurricanes...only occur in the North Atlantic tropics. Not a single South Atlantic hurricane has ever been documented- that is, before March 2004... may of those who suffered, because they had also refused to believe that hurricanes were possible in Brazil, had neglected to take shelter as the storm barreled towards shore."

Tropical storms to graze mainland Europe, increase in strength of hurricanes (about double)

Basically, we have seen all/are seeing this already... our planet has already warmed 1 degree. What we have seen is just the beginning.

more on chapter one coming