Here’s downtown St. Paul, less than half mile away, 3:05 p.m. on Wednesday June 14, 2023.

This afternoon, as predicted, we got a package from the Canadian Wildfires – the same ones which nearly blacked out metro New York City and much of the northeast a few days earlier.

(I searched “Canada wildfires June 2023” and linked is what I found.)

As those who have experienced what we did would likely attest, the unpleasant ‘fog’ was aggravating.  If we’re fortunate,  it will move on, quickly, to someone else’s neighborhood.  My apologies to those who get what we got.

To me, today’s ‘smog storm’ (my descriptor) is simply another indicator that we are a world without borders.  We still harbor the illusion that we can control our borders, which are breached millions of times a day by wind streams, airplanes, ships, human beings on the move, disease….

Covid-19 was a stealth visitor whose ultimate outcome could have been predicted at the outset.

We delude ourselves into thinking that isolation will protect us; that walls can be built to keep others out; that one country can be found to be responsible for a disease, etc., etc., etc.  That being in a gated community gives security.

There will probably always be resistance to world government; indeed world government in and of itself its no guarantee of success.

Perhaps the best we can do is to refine and expand ‘best practices’ where individuals, small and larger groups, towns, cities, states and nations work in coalitions of the willing to make this a better world, the world that we share.

Success is often a succession of small incremental steps, which appear to be hopelessly small, but in aggregate and over time make a real difference.

Let’s keep working.