Fire.

Postnote Sep 15, 2020:  Just Above Sunset “Only Science”.

from Greg Sep 15, seen in MinnPost: Megafires.

Davis Ca August 19, 2020 by John.

It’s a beautiful day here in the Twin Cities.  At mid-afternoon, the temp was 69.  bright sunshiny day.  I visited the historic Dowling Community Garden in south Minneapolis.  The scenery is typical near-fall flowers and foliage.  Summer is winding down.

When the Garden first appeared, in the heat of WWII, gardeners would be hard-pressed to even imagine the scene on the west coast, many savage wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington state.

These days, most all of us can easily stay up to date through many media, including personal.  For myself, I have a half dozen people in the three states each directly affected in one way or another.

Plus a year ago we AMTRAKed through much of Washington and Oregon and Northern California, so we saw the environment on the ground.  Two folks we dined with, from rural OR south of Portland, especially concern me.  Their farm is in the affected area.  We didn’t keep in touch with them, but we know where they live.

The west coast is not an abstract place to me, or to most of us.  We are not isolated as we might have been in long ago history.

We dismiss what is going on in the west, and in other places, at our peril.  The consequences are coming forward in bits and pieces – more severe weather: hurricanes, heat, etc.

We can argue that the science is not accurate; that all of this is just natural, that human behavior doesn’t impact all that much, and on and on.

Best we pay very close attention, and open our minds to the possibility that we may well be cause in the matter of the increasingly severe weather and change in climate patterns.

That’s all I’ll say about it.

Dowling Garden Minneapolis Sep 12, 2020.