http://edwardcurtin.com/drinking-coffee-in-the-early-morning-rain-and-thinking-of-donald-rumsfeld/
Drinking Coffee in the Early Morning Rain and Thinking of Donald Rumsfeld
It’s been raining incessantly for three days. It is a cool early morning in the beginning of July and I have just made a cup of coffee. Now an electrical power outage has occurred and so I am sitting in a rocking chair in the semi-darkness savoring my coffee and feeling thankful that I made it in time. I have a close relationship with coffee and the end of night and the break of day. As for time, that is as mysterious to me as the fact that I am sitting here in its embrace. The electric clocks have stopped. I think: To exist – how amazing!
More than the coffee, however, I am luxuriating in the sound of the tumbling rain. Its beautiful music creates a cocoon of peace within which I find temporary joy. The joy of doing nothing, of pursuing no purpose. Of knowing that whatever I do it will never be enough, for me or anyone, and the world will continue turning until time stands still, or whatever time does or is according to those who invented it. I will be gone and others will have arrived and the water will flow from the skies and the clocks will still tell people what they don’t know – time – although they will continue to tell it.
Humans are the telling animals.
A few weeks ago, when this area was in a mini-drought, the local newspaper, in the typical wisdom of such cant, had a headline that said “there is a threat of rain later this week.” They are experts at threats. This is the corporate media’s purpose. Rain is a threat, joy is a threat, doing nothing is a threat, the sun is a threat – but the real threats they conceal. To create fear seems to be their purpose, as they do not tell us about the real threats. Their purpose is not to tell the truth, but if you listen closely you can hear it.
In the middle of the night I woke up to go to the bathroom, and outside the small bathroom window I watched the rain engulfing the lower roof and sluicing down the shingles in two heavy streams. I thought how the desiccated mind of the headline writer must be feeling now, but then I realized that he or she was asleep, as usual. There is a moist world and a dry one, and the corporate media is run by arid souls who would like to make the world a desert like their masters of war in Washington.
Then as I sit here my brief peace is roiled by the memory of reading Tacitus, the Roman historian, and his famous quote of Calgacus, an enemy of Rome:
These plunderers of the world [the Romans], after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
I think of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on his recent deathbed. Here was a man whose entire life was dedicated to the American Empire. He spent all his allotted time making war or making money from the spoils of war. He was a desert maker, a slaughterer for the Empire. No doubt he died very rich in gold.
I can no longer hear the rain because my mind is filled with the loud thought of what Rumsfeld thought as he lay dying. Was he sorry? Did he believe in God or was his god Mars, the Roman god of war? Did he smile a bloody smile or say he was sorry and beg for forgiveness from all his innocent victims? Did he see the faces of the children of Iraq that he slaughtered? Or did he pull an Eichmann and say, “I will leap into my grave laughing”?
Your guess is as good as mine, but mine leans toward the bloody smile of a life well spent in desert making. But that is a “known unknown.”
Rolling thunder and a lightning strike in the east jolt me back from my deaf dark thoughts. The sound of the rain returns. The coffee tastes great. Peace returns with the unalloyed gift of the ravishing rain.
Yet the more I sit and listen and watch it soundly stipple the garden and grass, the more thoughts come to me, as my father once told me: Thoughts think us as much as we think thoughts. It’s what we do with our thoughts that count, he said, and like lightning, if we don’t flash when we are given the gift of life, when we’re gone, it will be as if we never were, like the lightning before it flashed.
Thomas Merton’s prophetic words from his hermitage in the Kentucky woods in 1966 think me:
Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By ‘they’ I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.
There are moments in many lives when, if one is lucky, they are initiated into a ritual that sustains them throughout life. To others these experiences can easily seem paltry and meaningless, but to the receiver they offer a crack into deeper dimensions of being and becoming. For me it was my introduction to coffee during a hurricane.
My father had driven my mother, three of my sisters, and me to Jones Beach on Long Island. This was before people checked the weather every minute. The sky in the southwest grew darker as we drove, but on we went. The beach was deserted except for some gulls and the parking lot empty. My father parked the car close to the beach and while my sisters and mother sat in the car, and my mother, listening to the weather reports, issued warnings to us, my father and I ran like wild dogs into the heavy surf despite her admonitions that the hurricane from the south was arriving sooner than expected. It started to rain hard. The surf picked up. We swam and got battered and shouted exultantly and came out shaking with the chills. A pure white sea gull landed on my wet head and my father laughed. Awe-struck, I stood stock still and my shaking stopped. In its mouth the sea gull held a purple ribbon, which it dropped at my feet as it flew off. I grabbed the ribbon and we jogged up to the concession building where there was one man working. My father ordered coffee and a hot chocolate for me. But they had run out of hot chocolate. So my father ordered two coffees and filled mine with three or four sugars. I had never sampled coffee and didn’t like the smell, but my father said to drink it, with the sugar it will taste good and it will warm you up. It strangely tasted like hot chocolate. We toasted our adventure as I drank my Proustian madeleine at eleven-years-old.
I had put the ribbon on the counter as we drank. When we were going back to the car, I noticed there were words on the ribbon. They said: Rest in peace. I have long lost the ribbon but retain its message.
So now every morning between the end of night and the break of day, I sit with my coffee and listen. And even when it isn’t raining, I watch the birds emerge from their nightly rests to greet the day with their songs. They tell me many things, and they are all free.
This morning I am wondering if Donald Rumsfeld ever heard them.
I suspect their message was an “unknown unknown” for him, just like the gift of rain. He preferred the rain of death from the skies in the form of bombs and missiles. He was only doing his job.
He made a desert and called it peace.
....
http://endoftheamericandream.com/the-scale-of-the-nightmarish-crisis-currently-unfolding-in-our-western-states-is-being-compared-to-hurricane-katrina/
The Scale Of The Nightmarish Crisis Currently Unfolding In Our Western States Is Being Compared To Hurricane Katrina
One of the worst natural disasters in the history of our country is unfolding right in front of our eyes. In the entire history of the United States, we have never seen heat in the western third of the nation like we have in 2021. In the entire history of the United States, we have never seen drought in the western third of the nation like we have in 2021. Needless to say, countless numbers of farmers and ranchers are deeply suffering because of the heat and drought, and it is being projected that this is going to be one of the worst years for wildfires that we have ever experienced. As you will see below, this crisis is being compared to Hurricane Katrina, but Hurricane Katrina only lasted for a few days. The crisis that we are now facing has already stretched on for many months, and there is no end in sight.
Let me start by discussing the record-breaking heat. Yet another heat wave is baking the western third of the nation right now, and it is being reported that the high temperature in Death Valley actually reached 130 degrees on Friday…
On Friday, the temperature at Death Valley soared to 130 degrees, breaking the previous daily record high of 129 set back in 1913, according to the National Weather Service. This reading comes within 4 degrees of the all-time world record of 134 F set there in 1913. The 134-degree mark happens to be the world record for the highest temperature ever measured on Earth.
Unfortunately, things didn’t really cool off during the weekend. The high temperature in Death Valley was 129 degrees on Saturday, and it was expected that the same high temperature would be hit on Sunday…
AccuWeather expected the temperature in Death Valley to reach 129 degrees Sunday, which would tie for the daily record high. Death Valley hit the same temperature Saturday. The world record high is 134 degrees.
Forecasters called for Las Vegas to hit another all-time high, as it did Saturday with a temperature of 117 degrees.
On Saturday, St. George, Utah, also hit 117, setting another tie for an all-time high, according to the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City.
There are moments every summer when conditions get really hot, but so far this summer the heat has been absolutely relentless. The extremely high temperatures that we have witnessed this month follow the hottest June that the continent of North America has ever experienced…
Researchers have confirmed what millions of Americans and Canadians who just endured scorching temperatures probably already suspected: Last month was the hottest June on record in North America.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), an agency supported by the European Union, said that average surface temperatures for June in North America were about one-quarter of a degree Fahrenheit (0.15 of a degree Celsius) higher than the average for June 2012, the previous record-holder.
At the same time, there has been very little meaningful precipitation in the western third of the nation this summer, and the latest map from the U.S. Drought Monitor is the worst that I have ever seen.
The state of Utah is being hit particularly hard, and one official is openly admitting that this is “the worst drought in the state of Utah’s history”…
That official, Dave Ure, speaking just after a tour of waterworks facilities in Summit County, put the situation in stark terms.
“We are in the worst drought in the state of Utah’s history right now, and the only thing compared to it is the droughts back in 1895 and 1933,” Ure said.
If you don’t live in the western third of the nation, it is going to be difficult for you to grasp how desperate things are becoming.
This isn’t just a drought. What we are witnessing right now is a mega-disaster of epic proportions, and scientists are telling us not to expect relief for the foreseeable future.
Farmers and ranchers are having a particularly difficult time. They can’t operate successfully without water, and one rancher in Utah told Fox News that this crisis is “going to equal or surpass the amount of people that that were impacted by Hurricane Katrina”…
Ron Gibson manages 1,500 head of cattle in Northern Utah but may soon lack the resources to sustain his herd. Scorching temperatures and the absence of rain have created a depletion in feed supply for cattle farmers like Ron. With watering rights in his area cut about 70% in efforts to preserve the water supply, more farmers are forced to outsource their feed, and the high demand has driven up the price four times greater than usual.
“When we look at the amount of impact that this kind of disaster is going to have on the country, it’s going to equal or surpass the amount of people that that were impacted by Hurricane Katrina,” he told Fox News.
Hurricane Katrina absolutely devastated one major city, but this crisis threatens to cripple one-third of the entire nation.
The longer the drought drags on, the lower water levels get, and at this point reservoir levels are getting dangerously low…
Reservoir levels are dropping throughout the West, as the drought tightens its grip on the region and intense summer heat further stresses both water supply and the surrounding landscape. Many reservoirs are at or approaching historic low levels due to lackluster rainy seasons combined with increasing temperatures due to climate change.
The drought crisis is perhaps most apparent in the Colorado River basin, which saw one of its driest years on record, following two decades of less-than-adequate flows. The nation’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead near Las Vegas, is at its lowest level since the lake filled after the construction of the Hoover dam in the 1930s; it currently sits at 1,069 feet above sea level, or 35% of its total capacity. It supplies water to Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico.
Water restrictions have already been implemented in many areas, but if this drought persists we are eventually going to see water restrictions that are far more draconian than we have ever seen before.
Needless to say, a lot of people living in the region won’t like that at all.
Of course the hot, dry conditions have also created an ideal environment for wildfires, and right at this moment hundreds of thousands of acres are currently burning…
More than 300,000 acres are burning across six states across the western United States on Sunday as the region battled yet another brutal heat wave that shattered records and strained power grids.
The largest, the so-called Bootleg Fire, burned across 143,607 acres in Oregon and was 0% contained. Officials in neighboring state California asked all residents to reduce power consumption quickly after the fire knocked out interstate power lines, preventing up to 4,000 megawatts of electricity from flowing into the state.
We are being told that this is going to be one of the worst years for wildfires in our history, and it may end up topping the list by the time it is all said and done.
This isn’t just a “bad summer” we are talking about.
What we are facing is a crisis that is unprecedented in size and scope, and scientists are telling us that it isn’t going to end any time soon.
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