How to begin this post? On Tuesday in "Anthropocene Humanities" we discussed ongoing disasters - fires in the West, a hurricane called Ida that had just hit Louisiana, recalling other fires and other floodings too - and I said we could probably start each class with similar calamity. Later I mentioned a student in the Chinese version of the class whose hometown is in Henan. After Henan was hit with deadly rains, he told me that now he understood why the course mattered. Well, thanks to Ida nobody's in any doubt why this course matters...
Or I could say that not quite two weeks ago, while we were in Beacon, New York City was visited by a storm called Henri which dumped an incredible and record-breaking 1.94 inches of rain on Central Park in just one hour. (This was right at the end of a scheduled "homecoming" concert in the Park celebrating the City's return to a semblance of normalcy after months and months of covid-related restrictions, which was fortunately cut short before the inundation.) But Ida blew that record away by over 60% last night, when an unfathomable 3.15 inches fell within an hour in the Park.
Or I could say that the news cycle has been reminding me of the bad old Trump days, of an endless sequence of disasters and Republican horrors bending the arc of history out of shape. Most recently the leaders of the state of Texas, abetted by a Trumpian Supreme Court, have not only tried to ban all abortions - no exceptions - but has essentially commissioned every citizen (and not just of Texas) to enforce it through legal vigilantism. The same state Republicans think voting is too good for most citizens, and that God wants people walking around with concealed firearms. What strange world of theological delusion do they live in, where such cruel absurdities are permitted or even thought necessary? How can we live in the same world?
But really I'm heartsick and confused. I'd rather not be able to craft a clever way to the Anthropocene showing up at our doorstep.
People died in their basement apartments in my city, in their cars.
As people did in flash flooding in Tennessee, and Germany, Japan, the Indian Himalaya and China. And Sibera burns along with the American West and all around the Mediterranean. Not fun, and it's not going to stop. President Biden calls climate change "one of the great challenges of our time" but it's not just our time. The Anthropocene isn't a topic you can move on from. It knocks at our door with ever greater ferocity. Wherever we go it'll be knocking at that door too.
