Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

Like thunder, I’m a foreign-borne cloud that’s
drifted here, I’m lightning, and the balm of rain.
Como tú, our blood rains for the dirty thirst of this
land. Like thirst, like hunger, we ache with the need to save ourselves, and our country from itself.

— Richard Blanco / “Como Tú / Like You / Like Me” / How To Love A Country

In part because their stories deemed their God the one “true” God, Christians believed that they were given the right to spread the word of God wherever they found nonbelievers. But there was more than spirituality at play: there was land, and the wealth it could bring. Christian nations acted based on a belief in their right to “discover” and claim any land, as long as they converted — read “saved” — those living on it.

— Tanya Talaga / The Knowing: How the Oppression of Indigenous Peoples Continues to Echo Today — A Native American History and Canadian Memoir of Intergenerational Trauma

The dead eyes of the iguanas, keeping vigil… will never / see the asteroid of their extinction…

— Martin Espada / “The Iguanas Skitter Through The Cemetery By The Sea” / Jailbreak of Sparrows

Climate scientists say the extreme weather ravaging the world is in line with what models have long predicted, though some disasters appear to be striking earlier and with more strength than expected. The underlying relationship between fossil fuel pollution and global temperatures was well known even to oil companies, who were at the forefront of corporate efforts to stymie action to cut pollution, as far back as the 1970s . . . “What people are not getting is that we can’t turn this back – the CO2 to a large part remains in the air for thousands of years,” said Rahmstorf. “Some people think we can wait and, when it gets too bad, then we reduce emissions and things will get better again. People don’t realise that we can’t make it get better again. We can only prevent it from getting much worse.”

— Ajit Niranjan / “‘We can’t make it better again’: what Europe’s wildfires tell us about the climate crisis” / The Guardian

Even the caged, tame goat can dream
of a distant mountain, inclines mauve
from the blossom of heather smelling
sweeter than any bagged feed; memories
of a mountain he has never been near,
moving from gene to gene like the yellow
of an eye or the kink in course white hair.

— Patrick Cotter / “Goat Dreaming”

Air conditioners are one option to keep people cool during increasingly frequent and intense heatwaves, but the technology has too many drawbacks to be the sole solution, say scientists. Instead, materials that are designed to passively cool buildings could be the way forward, they suggest. Materials that are layered, contain bubbles and air pockets or combine radiative cooling with evaporation could achieve the same effect as air conditioning without using energy, says architecture researcher Matthaios Santamouris. But many of these materials are still in prototype stages, and would require policies to encourage their use.

— Jacob Smith / “The alternatives to air conditioning” / Nature Briefing

He hates his neighbors’ flowers, claims his
are redder, bluer, whiter than theirs, believes
his bees work harder, his soil richer, blacker.
He hears birds sing sweeter in his trees, taller
and fuller, too, but not enough to screen out
the nameless faces next door that he calls
liars, thieves who’d steal his juicier fruit, kill
for his wetter rain and brighter sun.

— Richard Blanco / “Dreaming A Wall” / How To Love A Country

What I’m Listening To:

God, Zeus, Allah, Buddha
Bob Dylan on a motor scooter

Allah, Buddha, God, Zeus
Gotta get me a red caboose

— Butthole Surfers / “Mexico”