There are mornings I wake and wonder, why? Later, wandering the walkways, in search of something to fill the hole in me . . .
— Krista Franklin / “Everyday around the world a woman is pulled into blue”
The planet’s coral reefs, home to a quarter of all marine species, are in the middle of a planet-wide global heating crisis . . . About 90% of the extra heat that humans are trapping around the planet – mostly by burning fossil fuels – is taken up by the oceans. Nowhere is that white heat more visible than across the planet’s coral reefs.
— Graham Readfearn / “Thanks to rising ocean heat, the Great Barrier Reef is becoming a ‘graveyard’” / Down to Earth, The Guardian
Steadfast and awful, my tall father / Hit hard as a hailstorm. He’d leave / marks.
— Jericho Brown / “Duplex”
Atmospheric ‘rivers’ – ribbons of moist air that are typically about 2,000km long – will become more common as the planet continues to heat up. These will play a big part in flooding, bringing days of extreme rainfall without respite, saturating the ground and filling river systems to bursting . . . When you also consider the growing threat of serious wildfires and increased coastal flooding due to storm surges pumped up by rising sea levels, the overall picture becomes pretty grim.
— Bill McGuire / 46C SUMMER DAYS AND ‘SUPERCELL’ STORMS ARE BRITAIN’S FUTURE – AND NOW IS OUR LAST CHANCE TO PREPARE / Cool Earth, Substack
And it is not darkness that unites us, not the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, each drop of rain . . .
— Ada Limón / “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa”
“The longer we keep emitting greenhouse gases, the more this pollution builds up in the atmosphere, and the more climate heating it causes. It’s a process that effectively locks in warmer temperatures on our planet for thousands of years to come. The only solution is to stop polluting as quickly (and as safely and equitably) as possible.”
— Dr. Jonathan Foley / “Can Tech Save Us From Climate Change?” / BBC Science Focus
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
— Mary Oliver / “The Summer Day”
graphic: the guardian
What I’m Listening To:
She thumbed the galleon Cacafuego Forsook the eyebrows climbing Into greasy black hairlines
Small sharply defined puffs— No heat, no air compressors, Gaskets, rubber seals, rubber feet— Cloud-like, a shy homunculus, Trapped beneath a 5 o’clock crowd.
What I’m Reading:
I squeeze my days into such small boxes I forget that I can make whatever I want . . . . . . We can make whatever we want together.
A city will know that it’s succeeded in becoming a cycling city when people don’t think of themselves as cyclists – riding a bicycle is just the way to get around.
— Melissa Bruntlett & Chris Bruntlett / Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality
It was hypnagogic sitting with him on the vinyl sofa tucked under the vibrating signs THRILLS, LOVE, and THE BRIGHT & THE SHINY as bluegrass twanged. We talked deeply over Bengali food . . .
— Tree Abraham / Cyclettes
Digging rock from hardscaped beds, I think, is a bit like not writing poetry—like thinking about writing poetry but digging rock from my backyard instead.
— Camille T. Dungy / “Frequently Asked Questions: #6”
I went to the dining car and tried the breakfast poutine. I concluded that poutine is a perfect all-day meal. I wrote “open 24-hour poutine restaurant” in my notebook . . .
— Christopher Muther / “Two nights, three provinces, and 1,600 miles. A sleeper train through Maritime Canada is slow travel at its best” / The Boston Globe
When future generations look back upon the Great Derangement they will certainly blame the leaders and politicians of this time for their failure to address the climate crisis. But they may well hold artists and writers to be equally culpable — for the imagining of possibilities is not, after all, the job of politicians and bureaucrats.
— Amitav Ghosh / The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
I am thirty-two weeks pregnant when they announce it: the water is rising faster than they thought. It is creeping faster. A calculation error. A badly plotted movie, sensors out at sea.
— Megan Hunter / The End We Start From
WENDSLER NOSIE: In 1974, in the town of Globe, they still had signs, ‘Dogs and Indians Keep Out.’ We still had to order outside of restaurants. We really didn’t start eating in restaurants until the 1980s.
— Lauren Redniss / Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West
We are not hostages, America, and your soldiers are not God’s soldiers…
— Saadi Yousseff / “America, America”
image: p. remer
What I’m Listening To:
The power’s out And no one can save us No one can blame us now That the power’s out
thee istsfor manity reader 