Rabbit! Rabbit!

art, Astrology, autumnal equinox, brain plasticity, change, cognitive decline, coronavirus, cosmology, Creativity, Family, Great American Eclipse, greek myths, Helios, nature, Painting, pandemic, photography, rabbits, Reflection, The Lord of The Rings, trees, vision

Welcome to August!

In the long summer evenings, after an extended car trip, and way beyond the too many times I’d asked my mother and daddy rabbits, “Are we there yet?” I would get their firm reminders I wasn’t to bother them any more, for they too were hot, tired, and daddy had to pay attention to the road. In the gathering darkness, I’d rest my blonde curls on the door near the open window. We had God air conditioning back then. We rolled down the window glass of our old Pontiac and drove as fast as the road would allow.

I’d watch the darkening shadows as the landscape passed by this opening, noticing how the kudzu vines changed the trees into strange and monstrous shapes in the growing gloom, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of these apparitions. I was certain if I did, they’d begin to make their way toward our family car. I think I was at the age of magical thinking, for I believed I could keep these haints at bay by my will alone.

The soft flup flup of rubber tires half melting on the overheated concrete road, combined with my brother rabbits’ body heat in the seat beside me, and the enforced silence of our parents who’d had a long day with their hyperactive bunny brood finally had an effect on my eyelids. Try as I might, I would fall asleep at my watch, only to be awakened by my daddy’s sing song voice as he tickled my toes:

“This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home.
This little piggy ate roast beef, and this little piggy had none!
And this little piggy cried wee-wee-wee all the way home!”

I’d rub my eyes as he picked me up to carry me into the house and into my bedroom. On the way, I’d always say,

“I see the moon, and the moon sees me,
God bless the moon, and God bless me!”

Perhaps this is a generational gift in my family, for when my own dear bunny child was small, we repeated these same scenes until she was too heavy for me to carry. The moon blessing dates from 1784 and the little piggy rhyme is even older: 1728.

That latter date is when horses and carriages were banned from Boston Common. Since I went to school in Boston, I can attest no horses, carriages, or cows are now on the grounds of the Common, which is now a 50 acre public park. The Common dates from 1634, when William Blaxton sold the remainder of his land to the Puritans, receiving six shillings or more from each shareholder to purchase the land for this public land. This was the site of the Boston Massacre, in which five people died. One good thing about going to school in an historic community, everywhere you went, you weren’t far from history.

When I think of history, I think not only of the stories we pass down to the next generation, but also of the stories we weave for ourselves. How do we remember our childhood or our families of origin? This is a generational gift of privilege, for those who lost their families when they were young may not have memories to weave together. Refugees from wars and violence might not want to recall traumatic experiences. Yet Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, is remembered as “My ancestor was a wandering Arameam” (Deut 26:5).

Some of us choose to write about our better days, for they outnumber our bad days. Everyone has imperfections, but each of us rabbits are still going on to perfection with the help of the good God above. Perhaps when we see the beauty of the full bright moon against a dark, clear night, our heart leaps inside and says,

“I see the moon, and the moon sees me,
God bless the moon, and God bless me!”

For some of us rabbits, nature brings us closer to God than anything else. The majesty of the summer thunderclouds rising in the heated air, and giving way to either refreshing rain or flashing floods, reminds us once again of the powers of God unleashed in God’s creation. The rainbow after the storm is the promise once again of that covenant made so long ago: the earth will never be destroyed by floods again. In the rainbow, in the light of all the colors, we hear God’s promise of love and care for God’s creation and God’s creatures.

I’m looking at a full super moon tonight, July 3, but August will have TWO super moons. Looking ahead to September 29, we’ll have our FOURTH super moon in a row. The moon on the 31st of August will be a blue moon. This is the second full moon in the same month. We won’t have another blue moon until May, 2026. This is why things that don’t happen often are called “once in a blue moon” events.

Once upon a time, we were agrarian people who eked out a subsistence living on the land. The persistence of The Old Farmer’s Almanac and other ancient weather wisdom lore is proof you can take the bunny out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the bunny. Yet as our alphabetical generations accumulate beyond the boomers, like Lucy on the Honeymooners, we often “got some explaining to do” to make ourselves understood.

We can count the “Dog Days of Summer” among the sayings folks don’t understand today. The term has nothing to do with the four legged creatures known as our best friends, but instead, it’s an astronomical term. The name comes from Sirius, the Dog Star, which rises before dawn. We find it on a vertical line below the three stars of Orion’s Belt. Sirius was named from the Greek Seirios, which means ‘glowing’ or ‘scorcher.’ This is an apt description of the warmest days from mid July to mid August.

Aratus, a Greek 3rd BCE poet wrote in his astronomical poem Phaenomena, (p. 328 ff, trans. Mair):

“A star that keenest of all blazes with a searing flame and him men call Seirios (Sirius). When he rises with Helios (the Sun), no longer do the trees deceive him by the feeble freshness of their leaves. For easily with his keen glance he pierces their ranks, and to some he gives strength but of others he blights the bark utterly. Of him too at his setting are we aware.”

These Dog Days of Summer in the ancient Mediterranean were marked not only by heat, but also by drought and pistelence. This year, with an El Niño weather pattern, wild fires, floods, and extreme heat have settled on the area due to a heat dome, which the European meteorologists have named Cerebus, after the three-headed dog guardian to Hades. The ruins on the Acropolis now close from noon to late afternoon to prevent heat illness.

Although the ancient Greeks and Romans believed Sirius was the reason for summer’s intense heat, we know now that star is too far away to affect our weather. What does affect our weather today is the result of human activities. Back in the Eemian period, around 116,000 to 129,000 years ago, the earth’s axis was tilted more towards the sun than now. This caused our northern polar region to be warmer and grow trees, which kept snow from accumulating. As a result, the earth’s temperature was 2 degrees C hotter than preindustrial levels, while today’s temperatures average 1 degree C warmer.

Today, we have evidence of geographic drift caused by climate change in our crops. Areas once known for coffee or wheat are shrinking, moving further north or to higher altitudes. We also see shrinking polar ice sheets, which cause ocean levels to rise. More water, combined with more heat leads to more intense storms. We also have rivers of wind, aka the jet stream, which lock in the heat domes. These can persist for days, while the rest of the earth gets flooding and storms.

Not a Watermelon Chart: Similar to the National Weather Service’s heat index chart, this chart translates combinations of air temperature and relative humidity into critical environmental limits, above which core body temperature rises. The border between the yellow and red areas represents the average critical environmental limit for young men and women at minimal activity.

Extreme heat is the number-one weather-related cause of death in the U.S., and it kills more people most years than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined. Despite the fact that extreme heat has been the number one cause of weather-related deaths in the United States over the last three decades, the federal government has repeatedly declined to declare extreme heat a federal disaster. The US government has never issued a federal disaster declaration for an extreme heat event in the three times it’s been requested, even as heat domes and long, uninterrupted stretches of 100-plus degree days have claimed lives in cities and states across the country in recent years.

The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2010 and the month of June alone in the USA has broken over 1,000 high temperature records. The combination of El Niño, a warming ocean current, and climate change is the cause. The excessive heat in the oceans are causing coral diebacks, which have negative implications for future hurricane shore losses, since coral reefs break the incoming waves.

We bunnies can blame the Stafford Act for this. Natural disasters in the USA are handled by FEMA—Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, PL 100-707, was signed into law November 23, 1988 when Congress amended the Disaster Relief Act of 1974, PL 93-288. Named for the Vermont senator who was instrumental in its passage, this is one of the 100 laws a President can use to declare a national emergency or disaster. Former President Trump used it to declare the COVID pandemic an emergency. It’s this Stafford Act that defines “Emergency.”

According to Congressional laws, a disaster emergency is “any occasion or instance for which, in the determination of the President, Federal assistance is needed to supplement state and local efforts and capabilities to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in any part of the United States in a Major Disaster.

The act defines “major disaster” as any natural catastrophe (including any hurricane, tornado, storm, high water, winddriven water, tidal wave, tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, landslide, mudslide, snowstorm, or drought), or, regardless of cause, any fire, flood, or explosion, in any part of the USA, which in the determination of the President, causes damage of sufficient severity and magnitude to warrant major disaster assistance under this chapter to supplement the efforts and available resources of states, local governments, and disaster relief organizations in alleviating the damage, loss, hardship, or suffering caused thereby.

Fires of Mordor have nothing on Phoenix Heat

To get heat relief, it will require an Act of Congress. In plain speak, we’ll see snowfall before heat relief legislation becomes law in today’s divided and polarized congressional body. In the last century, we bunnies weren’t thinking about climate change, extreme weather events, or even naming our winter storms. Perhaps next summer we’ll begin naming our extended heat waves and treat them with the same seriousness as we give to hurricanes and blizzards.

In the meantime, this bunny has set her AC to cool and is keeping the ice bin filled and the tea jar full. I’m feeling the siren call of the school supply aisle, so I’ll find a cool morning in mid August to go buy ink pens, notebooks, and some postynotes. A bunny who keeps learning will always stay young. Building new pathways for the neurons is like cleaning out the clutter in our brain box.

Write now, Edit later. The stories are more important than the form.

I always recommend picking up a new skill or renewing an old one, for not only do creative activities give us an opportunity to focus on something other than how hot it is, but also we can enjoy our progress as we continue to work. If you’ve ever wanted to write about your family history, begin now, for the day will come for all of us when we won’t remember the ones we love. This bunny hopes you have bunnies who love you and honor you for who you’ve always been, even if you become the “one who comes to kiss me every afternoon at 4 o’clock.”

I’ll probably go buy my journal supplies on August 24th, and sit in my favorite coffee shop for a bit to drink in memory of Pluto, who was worthy enough to be a planet for my generation,but has been demoted to a dwarf planet because it hasn’t cleared its neighborhood of other objects.

I look forward to cooler breezes, falling leaves, and Pumpkin Spice lattes. See you in September!

Joy, peace, and iced tea,

Cornelia

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Gammer Gurton’s Garland, or, The Nursery Parnassus, by Joseph Ritson.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34601/34601-h/34601-h.htm

Teaching Early Math to Children—This Little Piggy
https://www-tc.pbs.org/parents/earlymath/pdf/LittlePiggy.pdf

Origin of This Little Piggy
https://www.rhymes.org.uk/this_little_piggy.htm

Boston Common Master Plan
https://www.bostoncommonmasterplan.com/history

Super Moons, Blue Moons
https://www.fullmoonphase.com/

What is a blue moon and when will the next one occur? | Royal Observatory Greenwich https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/what-blue-moon-how-often-does-it-occur

SIRIUS (Seirios) – Greek God of Dog-Star https://www.theoi.com/Titan/AsterSeirios.html

THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER: European heat wave takes toll on tourists – Travel Industry Today
https://travelindustrytoday.com/the-dog-days-of-summer-european-heat-wave-takes-toll-on-tourists/

42 U.S. Code § 5122 – Definitions | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute FEMA STAFFORD ACT
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/5122
https://www.fema.gov/disaster/stafford-act

Extreme Heat Is Deadlier Than Hurricanes, Floods and Tornadoes Combined – Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/extreme-heat-is-deadlier-than-hurricanes-floods-and-tornadoes-combined/

From Japan to Louisiana to Rome, Here Are Ten Heat Records Earth Has Broken Since June | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ten-heat-records-earth-has-broken-since-june-180982562/

Painting Snow Scenes

adult learning, arkansas, art, Creativity, Faith, Family, Healing, Holy Spirit, hope, Imagination, Ministry, nature, Painting, renewal, texas, trees, vision

I’ve always been a weather watcher, even as a small child. One of my first memories of the weather was my Dad putting the finishing touches on cutting the front lawn just as the first raindrops would fall from the sky. When I grew up and had my own home, the scent of an impending thunderstorm would send me outside frantically to mow my own lawn. I finally asked Daddy why he always mowed just before the storm.

He replied, “It’s too hard to mow when the grass is wet and the ground is soggy.” I thought to myself, “Why don’t we just pick a sunny day, but that might be too easy, or we’re off doing fun things on that time.”

In Arkansas, our farm communities pay close attention to the weather, for the crops which are their livelihoods depend on it. In ancient times, keeping track of the seasons and knowing weather lore was important. Today we depend on weather forecasters for this arcane knowledge, but if we follow basic science, we learn about global patterns which affect our weather: El Niño, La Niña, the Polar Vortex, as well as the extremes brought on by climate change, such as more active hurricane seasons and intense temperatures, both hot and cold.

My parents grew up during the Great Depression. Their grandparents were the first generation off the farm, working either in town or on the railroad. When mom and dad first started out in a one room garage apartment, they practiced frugality. Later on, they always bought an extra can of whatever was on sale at the grocery store. They were always prepared for the emergency of another mouth at the table or a sudden ice storm, not that one often happened. Since I was following the national news, I had stocked up ahead of time on rice, beans, mixed veggies, chicken, and coffee. If snowmageddon were to arrive, I would meet it on a full stomach. It was only after the streets thawed several days later and I ventured out that I saw the stark emptiness of the grocery store shelves. Starbucks was out of many products also, since their suppliers are based in Texas.

Gary Joiner of the Texas Farm Bureau estimated damages to the agriculture sector alone could exceed $500,000,000 statewide. “The bulk of that will be in the Rio Grande Valley where the fruits and vegetables grown there really took a hit. Consumers will see an absence of some Texas products for a period of time because of the freeze.”

Winter Storm Uri causes $600,000,000 damages to Texas agriculture. This is a frozen citrus tree.

Texas cattle ranchers were in the midst of calving season, so to protect the newborns, they built hot boxes with heat lamps or brought the animals into their homes. Extreme weather calls for extreme acts of compassion.

Let’s contrast our modern views of Nature with the views presented in the Wisdom book of Job. In the book of Job, we hear one of his friends tell him, “God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend. For to the snow he says, ‘Fall on the earth’; and the shower of rain, his heavy shower of rain, serves as a sign on everyone’s hand, so that all whom he has made may know it” (37:5-7). This friend wants Job to understand God’s ways are inscrutable to mere human beings and neither Job, nor any of us, should question why bad things happen to good people.

Of course, Job won’t have any truck with this argument, and must have given his pals the look that says, “You boys take me for some kind of fool?” This sends his friends into a tizzy, so they keep piling on:

“From its chamber comes the whirlwind,

and cold from the scattering winds.

By the breath of God ice is given,

and the broad waters are frozen fast.

He loads the thick cloud with moisture;

the clouds scatter his lightning.

They turn round and round by his guidance,

to accomplish all that he commands them

on the face of the habitable world.

Whether for correction, or for his land,

or for love, he causes it to happen.” (Job 37:9-13)

His friends remind Job how God uses even natural events for God’s purposes. God can cause a snow storm to humble us (correction), to refresh the water supply (for the land), or to bring a community together (for love). We saw evidence of this during our recent snowstorm, which impacted not only Texas, but also the Lower 48 states, where by the morning of February 16, 73% of the continental USA was blanketed by snow. This was the most widespread snow cover in the contiguous U.S. since 2011. If we say “Mother Nature hit us with a whammy,” I wonder why we weren’t also blaming Old Man Winter. This is International Women’s Month after all, and we ought not to blame only the women for bad things!

Lots of bad things did happen, just from the back to back winter storms named Uri and Viola. In Texas alone, estimated losses from the extended freeze and power outages in Texas could reach $90 billion, with around $20 billion of those losses covered by insurance. Compare that to the entire 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. According to a new report from AccuWeather, the 2020 hurricane season was responsible for $60-65 billion in economic damages. This figure includes property damage as well as wage losses, business losses and bankruptcies, contamination of drinking water, municipal and state costs, federal assistance, cleanup costs and health costs.

One of the local electric providers, Just Energy, has sought bankruptcy protection due to unexpected costs. “The weather event caused the ERCOT wholesale market to incur charges of $55 billion over a seven day period, an amount they ordinarily incur over four years.” Brazos Electric Power Company has filed for Chapter 11 and Griddy is out of business, since its 10,000 customers have been given to other companies due to its violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The Texas Attorney General is seeking refunds for customers. Other utility companies are considering bankruptcy, or perhaps amortizing the high bill across ten years and letting their customers pay for it on time. Since these same companies failed to make the suggested winterizing changes to their physical plants a decade ago, I wonder why their problem is now their customers’ problem?

In this instance, everyone points a finger at everyone else. People died due to the cold weather and the utilities failure to prepare for it. Insurance rates are going up, not just in Texas, given that some of these companies have a national portfolio. Food costs are going up, due to scarce supplies and longer distances for delivery. Citrus will cost more for years until the orchards recover. So it’s an object lesson for the rest of us. As my old nannie used to say, “A stitching time saves nine,” while my daddy took the Texas plan of “Don’t fix what ain’t broke.” Unfortunately, his plan could leave me stranded on the side of the highway in a broke down car. I tend to take better care of my vehicle. He also never realized my brothers were fixing his car on the sly because he had that ornery streak.

Of course, current temperatures are now in the mid 70’s and low 80’s, so everyone is using the air conditioning. They went from the dead of winter into springtime. For parts of California and Arizona, this spring leaf out was the earliest in the 39-year record. Every one to four years, Texas has an early spring, whereas central Arkansas has a late spring every five to ten years. The further south you go toward the equator, the more pronounced the seasonal extremes become.

Of course back in biblical times, folks had weather lore, but no satellites to observe the land from on high. They could keep oral and written accounts of the past weather events, so the memories of the elders were treasured. Job’s friends try to make the events of nature the result of God’s actions, but then God answers Job out of the whirlwind:

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war?” (38:22-23)

I’d never accuse God of mansplaining to his creatures, but maybe “Godsplaining” is a better term: “Are you competent to answer this question? How do you know for certain? What experience have you had that allows you to speak of things you can’t possibly know?” We human beings haven’t been privileged to walk among the clouds or to know the hidden halls where the frozen treasures are stored. Yet we persist in talking about the hidden wisdom of God as if we were initiates to privileged information. We can’t know God fully as yet, for God is fully spirit and we are both body and spirit. As Paul reminds us, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

The amazing climax of this book is God’s appearance to Job and his affirmation of Job’s understanding of God’s nature. Job tells God:

“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6).

Job might have said today: My bad. I’m just saying words. Many words. The best words. Now I know it’s all just a word salad. Don’t listen to my friends. They mean well. Just trying to help. What do they know? Like me—not much.

Since we in Arkansas didn’t get the brunt of this storm, our emotional reaction to it wasn’t strong or deep. This might have been different if we had gone through an extended period of time without power. Many of us noted only the closings of local businesses or the lack of certain products on the shelves. My utility bill wasn’t much higher than last month. Our paintings of the recent snowstorm reflected this experience. I asked our group to bring a photograph of the snow from their home life. Mike brought his backyard deck and Gail brought her tree filled landscape. I worked on a traditional landscape as seen from my window high above the lake, looking out over the bridge. Our snowscapes were calm, quiet, and serene. There wasn’t a sign of trauma anywhere, unlike the ongoing mass trauma event still affecting the state of Texas.

However, the extreme weather changes aren’t just limited to Texas, for currently about 1% of the world’s population lives in a hot zone that scientists expect to expand to affect about 19% of the world’s people. Already people in Guatemala are leaving land that is getting too hot and too unpredictable for rainfall to grow enough to feed their families. Climate change is bringing them northwards. We can expect our crop plantings to move northward as the temperatures warm, even though this may take decades. We can prepare to welcome climate migrants or we can help restore and renew the face of the earth so they can live in their homelands and be able to raise and feed their families in peace.

Temperature Increases Around the World per Decade

In the map above, we can see the temperature difference between summer and winter months (per decade) from 1979-2016. Red shows a large temperature difference between the seasons, while blue shows a small temperature difference.

God’s promise in Genesis 8:22 after the destructive flood still holds true: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” God doesn’t promise us the world will always stay the same, for we have the freedom to change our world for good or ill. We can work in cooperation with God, or against God’s desires. As the Psalmist reminds us:

“When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground.” (104:30)

Winter Storm Uri

https://weather.com/safety/winter/news/2021-02-14-winter-storm-uri-south-midwest-northeast-snow-ice

Texas insurance losses Uri

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southcentral/2021/03/01/603269.htm

Historic Hurricane Losses in 2020

https://www.propertycasualty360.com/2020/12/07/historic-2020-hurricane-season-responsible-for-60-65-billion-in-economic-damage/?slreturn=20210210172220

Just Energy Seeks Bankruptcy After Texas Loss

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-09/pimco-backed-just-energy-seeks-bankruptcy-after-texas-loss

Extreme Impact on Texas Agriculture

https://krock1017fm.com/winter-storm-uri-impact-on-texas-agriculture/

The Great Climate Migration Has Begun