Whoah, is it the end of June already? Rather than miss this month entirely, I'm publishing this issue on the very last day. Whew!
A lot has been going on in our world. I normally focus on a single topic for each month's Musing, but so much has been top-of-mind that I feel it best to give you a large appetizer plate rather than the main course. Besides, it's hot, and there's nothing like a cool gazpacho and a cheese plate to take that edge off the heat.
To say it's hot is an understatement, for some parts of the world. France is going through 100+ degree spells right now. Have you seen the
"screaming weather map" that's been making the rounds on social media?
Worse yet, apparently Germany's Autobahn is melting, jaguars are having to cool off in swimming pools, and men are driving scooters naked.
A few years ago, I lost a reader, a fan of "The Muse," because she was offended by a post I had written about climate change, something she told me wasn't real. She was half right. It's not really climate
change anymore. We've got a bonafide climate
crisis on our hands. The longer we deny it, the less opportunity we have, as a society and as a species, to adapt, improve, and stave off the worst impacts predicted by climate models.
Ironically,
notes taken by the captains of whaling ships (yeah, I know) in the 1800s are now helping to fill some of the gaps in the global temperature record.
There's another gap that's just as severe, and potentially even more threatening to our society than the climate crisis. It's the moral fabric of our society that's being shredded on a daily basis. Lies raining down from the White House. From people in all manner of institutions that are supposed to represent us, inform us, support us. From government to the media. Nothing new of course, but it's brazen now and increasingly normalized. Not to mention blatant breaking of the law on many levels of our government. And that is the toxic cocktail that's allowing the worst elements of our society to bubble up, like the policy of tearing families apart and putting children in jails. Yes, jails. "Detention centers" is just
a semantic wash.
As a mother, the family separations and jailing of children weighs on my conscience on a daily basis. Sometimes I can barely concentrate on work. I feel guilty being able to go to the farmer's market every weekend. Yes, I speak out. Yes, I donate to the non profits working with the migrant families. I talk to people in my circles about it—most recently, to my own detriment (some of my co-workers would rather not hear about other people's problems, it seems).
But it's not enough. Somehow we need to get our country, and our moral fabric, back together.
~ Birgitte
