SMOKE
After the hottest June worldwide ever recorded and the hottest first week in July ever recorded this morning is a code orange smoke alert for Asheville and, I think, much of the Eastern United States from Canadian forest fires. The photograph above is of a cloudless sky with the orange sun barely showing through.
Also in the paper today is a report on a study that finds the Asheville area the best place to camp out in the United States. But this summer in Asheville is a good time to stay in and not camp out.
In a way it is pointless to write a post about the effects of extremely hot weather here because everyone in the world is now acutely aware of global warming. But now the news is no longer about warnings about the possible future effect of too much carbon in the atmosphere, but rather it is about how best to deal with global warming right now and in the future.
Summer school vacations used to be the time to travel, but with the Acropolis closed and Rome baking and even Paris and Amsterdam and Berlin stifling it doesn‘t seem like such a good time to vacation in Europe.
Sicily and Greece where I will be going in October and November are unbearable now at the time of high season rates. I will be there for low season rates when the temperature will be pleasant and the water still warm enough for swimming. India and Sri Lanka in January will be cool and pleasant. Everything is turning upside down, but it takes so long for attitudes and ways of doing things to change. We still vacation in the summer and stay home the rest of the year when vacationing would be pleasant
MAGA people yearn to go back to the good old days, which for many minorities in the United States were a time of feeling that they were repressed. The new quickly shrinking world with its rapidly changing technology and inclusive values, including the fact of global warming, are a threat to the old traditional American values. But rage at change won‘t cool things off, either in the weather or in our hearts. We must learn to live with rising temperatures and we will have to adapt to identity change or else burn ourselves up.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 