Notes From The Dog Days

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Yes, the dog days of summer are here, with Sirius, the dog star, taking its traditional position high in the sky. You’d think someone like me who has lived through the blistering heat of Tucson and Las Vegas, counting summer seasons in the run of days well above one hundred, would have acclimatized to high temps, but — trust me — that “dry heat” desert-thing is oh-so-true. Crank up the Fahrenheit, throw in some mid-western humidity and watch me wilt, this year especially.

Heat in the southwest has its own tempo, extremes both anticipated and prepared for, even as it drains the piggy bank in energy costs and pushes the envelope in both comfort and productivity. Spend a season in the desert and you will come away with a checklist of precautions and a clear understanding of your own limitations. Afternoon siestas were born under the brain-baking temps announced by Sirius, wisdom accommodated from the time of the ancient Romans until the advent of air-conditioning (and the signaling of our withdrawal from the reality of nature’s demands, furthering a self-inflicted assault on our intuitive, authentic self.)

Extreme weather is a deal breaker, even in short bursts, burdening the nation’s (now fragile) infrastructure and resources. What we’re facing this year is more than just extreme, it’s exceptional. This is the hottest year on record thus far, with crops decimated and damage growing daily. America is the provider of corn and soy to much of the world — sadly, a good bit of it RoundupReady™ — and the corn crop is estimated to be down by half or more; we will learn the fate of soy in the next couple of weeks, with mid-western temps projected in a long string of triple-digits. Water in lakes and streams, traditionally used for pleasure in the summer season, is being tapped to sustain animals and crops, with 61% of the US in moderate to exceptional drought: some 1,297 counties in 29 states, and counting.

While there appears no physical relief from this heat wave in sight, we can take some existential relief in noting that the words “climate change” have finally begun to appear in mainstream news, a tentative toe-in to a frightening truth no longer simply inconvenient, but now both imminent and disastrous. Interestingly, our avoidance of this issue seems to have left us unable to cope with possible solutions, even as we flirt with its dire projections. Solutions remain unexamined.

And still, the evidence keeps piling up: the melting icecaps, the rising tides that have already left some homeless and others endangered, species suddenly appearing in territory that indicates a stunning moderation of colder climes, warnings of food and water emergencies of the kind the 3rd world suffers visited on our own nation. According to a discouraging but enlightening Bill McKibben piece in Rolling Stone, all this has happened much faster than we’d anticipated. “A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.”

Yes, we can report the facts, but we hesitate to call it by name or suggest a remedy. Amazing though it may seem, the Dems are still not desperate enough on this issue (our fault) to push it as an emergency, but — hubris much? — the GOP has already suggested that we need to drill, baby, drill to get the energy necessary to fight these soaring temperatures and climate inconsistencies. In some kind of reflexive shit-cramp response, the moneyed among us think throwing more money at this will fix it, carefully weighing the cost of lobbying and PR campaigns against profits still rolling in from the purse of a deluded public, and that doing the same thing we’ve always done will make this better (not for us little people, of course, but surely for themselves.)

Ahhhhh, but we HAVE no money, remember? We’re all broke, all tapped. Having frittered away our money on liberal causes like food stamps for the needy and children’s health, we are now unable to invest in new climate-friendly technologies under such overwhelming monetary crunch (and we’ll just have to live with that, hippie, greenie socialist zealots that we are!) Better yet, let’s weaken those EPA standards even more, that’s the ticket!

U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack briefed the president on the emergency this week, stopping to tell reporters that he’s on his knees everyday, praying for rain. Well, golly. Coming from the “God helps those who help themselves” school of thought, I’d rather he’d have encouraged Obama to attend the environmental summit in Rio last month, but I’ll hold out for a bit of divine intervention, just for ducks. Perhaps he prays to the same God that has Hillary Clinton’s ear, prompting her to listen to the outcry of some of our top scientific minds, entreating her to include climate change in her consideration of the Keystone XL pipeline. Me, I’d rather pray for awareness than rain.

Thinking of Mr. Vilsack on his knees reminds me of one of my earliest a’ ha moments, reading a favorite author and a favorite book: James Michener’s The Source. Michener is famous for starting his works of historical fiction in the geological beginnings of a given area, then inhabiting that place with remarkable characters that move across the centuries in fat editions of potent storytelling (which I sorely miss.) In The Source, he chronicles the beginning of religious faith as humankind, new to agriculture, was inspired to worship the elements in order to gather favor for their crops. In Michener’s imagination, the creation point for God was when we suddenly became aware of our dependence on nature. Seems a shame that we lost that particular bit of wisdom, don’t you think? Take paradise, put up a parking lot.

There is another thing the dog days bring us each year. Perhaps it’s the heat that pushes some of us over the edge, robs us of reason and goads our darker instincts, but whatever it is, there seldom seems a summer that doesn’t bring some tragic event for the nation to mourn. As I write, the television is a’buzz with snips and bits on the Holmes killings in Colorado, where over a dozen dead remind us of the twelve similarly assassinated at Columbine. It’s children being butchered again, reportedly as young as three-months old although this attack on a theatre seemed non-specific, wounding and killing students, elders, veterans and youngsters alike. Over on YouTube, viewing reports of the assassin’s mother’s horrified response, a posted comment drew my attention: “man, wtf is up with the world?” What the fuck, indeed!

Does this level of heat work to make people a little crazier than usual, I wonder, a bit more rash and a tad less reasonable? Michele Bachmann’s renewed attack on Muslims in public service, for instance, or Bill O’Reilly’s statement that Obama is seeking to restrain capitalism because of his “grievances” about slavery? Since that 2008 silly season when Glenn Beck was unleashed upon the world, it’s become increasingly difficult to keep up with the onslaught of senseless and embarrassing accusations from Pub leaders in this nation. Consider the demand by Tea Party faithful, Judson Phillips, that Obama prove he never smoked crack or had gay sex; this from the same bozo who called Wisconsin union workers Nazi brownshirts. And Rush, not to be forgotten, insists Barack hates America and is determined to kill off the American Dream. While we’re at it, let’s add his insistence that The Dark Knight Rises is actually a lefty conspiracy against all things good and right(wing.) Yes, perhaps it’s the heat that drives us to irrationality, or perhaps it’s just a perfect storm of climate change, consciousness shift and electioneering.

I don’t want to bum you out (too late, eh??) but we do have to face facts if we want to find solutions for such difficult problems, and physical evidence aside, the facts are that we’re being hijacked by our neighbors’ ignorance when we can least afford to be. This is, as you know, a life-threatening situation, screaming at a nation that seems to be contemplating suicide to get a grip.

Eric’s recent mention of QB1 and its association with threshold issues — death among them — is pertinent to this conversation. I’m always intrigued that most progressives and those who don’t hold religion in a vice-grip have more real faith in life than do those who profess deep religious conviction. Life has a way of taking care of itself when you don’t try to rewrite its rules and stop trying to control everything — when we do, we’re always a day late and a dollar short for the majesty of life itself, in the original template given to us by nature.

From July 3 through Aug. 11, Sirius keeps heartbeat with the Sun. After that, the heat traditionally trends downward slowly, bringing the first hint of September’s fading light, but this year all I can think is, “What will that look like?” I have no idea. Each morning as I open the door to let out the dog, I find my containers of parched marigolds and vincas covered in crisp, brown leaves that have fallen from the trees; they’re dying in place, months ahead of time. The crops that are withering in the fields got an early start by as much as six weeks, adding to the damage this unexpected drought has brought and drying not only the plants but the earth itself, which is now beginning to crack. That’s extreme drought, the kind that created the dust bowl of the ’30s. This has all escalated in a matter of weeks, not years, which is how drought is typically measured. But as unusual as this is, perhaps it means something else entirely. Something we haven’t thought of yet.

A good deal of the channeling is pointing toward a renewal of the earth, temperatures warming to accommodate a more temperate model. Not so cold, not so hot, something more tropical, all around. That’s a bit of a leap, of course, science telling us something else … but then I think of the birds courting in February, the baby bunnies improbably following soon after and my shock at watching tiny fledglings in the early spring, trying out their wings months early. I wonder about the moderate weather that brought leaves and buds way too soon, blossoms in March and fruit to maturity in June, months ahead of schedule. Is everything really just weeks ahead of time? Are we in the doldrums of August heat at the moment, soon to go into cooler weather; nature out of synch? We saw it all coming, didn’t we? Perhaps now we can “see it” differently, begin to remediate this view, finally aware of the power of our choices.

As Neal Donald Walsch tells us: “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” If we’re profoundly uncomfortable, we’re in exactly the right place. And here’s the metaphysics: the fastest, most enduring way to become a master of our own “stuff,” is to carry it with us through the meat grinder. We are guaranteed to lay it down somewhere on the journey. The quickest way to learn empathy and compassion is to face our own fears, climb across the debris of our mistakes, coming to the self-forgiveness required to regain our balance as a conscious human. And yes, the shortest route to growth is to endure the pruning away of what is no longer useful. That is not easy to do, but it’s required, as Anaïs Nin reminded us when she said, “And the day came when the risk to stay tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

You and I are poised on great discoveries, science is just getting started, and real faith – in what we know, in who we want to become — can trump even the most challenging period. Me, I don’t think we’re going to burn ourselves to a crisp, but we’re certainly trying to scare ourselves into a stupor. I think some of us, here on planet Terra, will be leaving this plane rather than deal with the loss of the old mythologies, but I have enormous faith in this process of Shift in which we are all participants, a deep, abiding respect for the wisdom of the planet despite the thoughtlessness of those astride her.

Today, Jupiter in Gemini is sextile the Aries Uranus, completing several days of sharp intuition and vision. Tomorrow, the Sun will come home again to Leo, strengthening our resolve and our love of life. Let’s stretch out in the lion skin, relax and survey our situation. All around us, the darkness of the 2012 challenges attempts to keep us far from our own instinct and connection to spirit, but who and what we listen to is always our choice, isn’t it?

Take this moment to entertain new ideas, let go of old rules and fears. We don’t have to forget the vital business of life in order to enjoy what we’ve been given. Our stewardship here isn’t “either/or.” This is the time to turn our thoughts toward miracles of perception — healing us, those around us and the planet — that come with a change of mind. If we let all the thoughts in our head become silent, and reach out with our hearts to confidently embrace what’s in front of us to do, the desert will bloom and so will we. Let’s make the dog days count for something this year, dreadful and painful though they might seem today. Let’s hold a perfected vision of our healed world, an awakened population and a future full of Light — and then let’s spend the rest of the year making it come to pass.