The weather weirdness continues. I still have flowers blooming in the garden amidst the fallen autumn leaves. I can still pick arugula to put on a sandwich. The ground has zero frost in it. Nonetheless, with an assist from Mrs. Dashwood, I planted garlic today even though the 10-day forecast shows night temperatures well above freezing. Even though Tuesday is forecast to be 80F / 26C! I am unable to wrap my brain and senses around this senseless weather, and I am terrified that if I didn’t plant the garlic now, there will be a surprise snowstorm burying the garden under inches of snow and rendering garlic planting impossible. And then I would have no garlic next July. 

So now, instead of a snowstorm, I am worried about it being too warm and all the garlic sprouting. I buried the garlic bed beneath a pile of leaves held down with some netting in the hope that this will somehow keep the garlic safe should it suddenly get cold or should it begin to sprout. I don’t know what else to do.

Minnesota climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld sent out a newsletter this last week about the current weather situation. He notes that September 1 through October 23 has been the warmest on record in the Twin Cities. However, during this time there have been no daily high temperature records, instead it’s been a cumulative warmth. And that, he suggests, makes it easy to overlook.

When we think about extreme weather we think about events like hurricanes Helene and Milton, we think about flash floods, heatwaves, deep droughts. And because we think only of extreme events like these we overlook the bigger picture and miss the nuanced extremes. We miss the fact that this fall has been the third major climate event of the year in Minnesota. We had a flash drought in late winter through early spring followed by months of wetter than “normal” weather that then turned into another flash drought. No record breaking high temperatures, no record breaking rain events, just a back and forth between extremely dry and extremely wet which makes it harder to notice how extreme it truly is.

I think when it comes to climate change we have been misled into expecting dramatic weather events. To be sure, there are plenty of them and there will be plenty more to come. But the truly extreme is creeping up on us while we are all gawping at the catastrophes.

We did have some rain this week. On Thursday we had a nice soaking for a couple of hours; the first rain in eight weeks. The precipitation pattern is likely about to change. Whether it will be moderate and regular or flip back to very wet remains to be seen. The National Weather Service says the chances are high for a wetter than “normal” winter along with a warmer than “normal” winter. All I can do is wait and see and cope with whatever happens as best I can. 

Reading

• Book: Orbital by Samantha Harvey. On the short list for the Booker Prize, but also very buzzy, this is a slim, meditative book that one should not read before bed at the risk of falling asleep. Not that it is boring, far from it, but it has one of those soothing, lyrical tones that lulls. It has no plot and no character development. The premise is an Earth day in the life of the six astronauts on the international space station. It amounts to lots of thoughts about space and earth and humanity, life and death, sprinkled through with bits about what it is like to live on the space station. I didn’t find it amazing, but I did enjoy it very much.
• Poetry: You Exist to Dream by Zuhair Abu Shayeb. Shayeb is a Jordanian poet. “You exist/ to dream under a vine/ and make its shade whole.”
• Speech: Elif Shafak on the Power on the Power of Literature and Being a Writer in the “Age of Angst.” This is the text of Shafak’s address delivered at the Frankfurt Book Festival.
• Essay: On reading Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea and why kids these days can’t read by Helen De Cruz. You may have heard or read the Atlantic article about elite college students who can’t read books. Apparently, one young woman made it all the way into an elite school never having learned to read because she used a computer to everything to her and then used voice to text to “write” her papers. It’s gobsmackinginly appalling to me that something like this can happen. This essay talks about why kids can’t read these days, as well as the essay author’s own reading challenges, all in the context of Murdoch’s book (which is a really good book by the way). The author concludes that for many reading is doing nothing and does not fit into the cult of productivity, therefore people do not allow themselves the time and space to “be” with a novel. This is not my experience, but then I am an older Gen X who came of age before computers could do things like they can now.
• News article: Republican Attorneys General to Court: We Demand More Pregnant Teens. The first attempt to ban mifepristone was thrown out of court because those who brought the suit didn’t have standing. To have standing, one must prove that they have been harmed in some way. So a number of Attorneys General are trying again. They are arguing that the abortion drug is “a sovereign injury to the state itself” because it causes downstream harm by decreasing the state’s population, thereby reducing federal funding to the state as well as potentially losing a Congressional seat. It’s a big stretch, and I will be horrified if the court agrees. That they are making such an argument, however, is sickening since it is based on the belief that women are obliged to have babies in order to serve the power of the state, that we are nothing but breeding stock.

Quote

“Before long, for all of them, a desire takes hold. It’s the desire—no, the need (fuelled by fervor)—to protect this huge yet tiny earth. This thing of such miraculous and bizarre loveliness. This thing that is, given the poor choice of alternatives, so unmistakably home. An unbounded place, a suspended jewel so shockingly bright. Can humans not find peace with one another? With the earth? It’s not a fond wish but a fretful demand. Can we not stop tyrannising and destroying and ransacking and squandering this one thing on which our lives depend? Yet they hear the news and they’ve lived their lives and their hope does not make them naive. So what do they do? What action to take? And what use are words? They’re humans with a godly view and that’s the blessing and also the curse.”

Samantha Harvey, Orbital, page 108

Listening

• Podcast: Imaginary Worlds: Who Gets to Survive: The Final Girls of Horror (35 minutes). For horror fans and not horror fans alike, the discussion is about the “final girl” trope and how it is evolving.

Watching

I thought there were five episodes of Pride and Prejudice, but it turns out there are six. Lizzy begins to have feelings for Mr. Darcy after seeing Pemberly and Lydia has eloped with the dastardly Mr. Wickham. Such a juicy episode. And now next weekend I get to see the happy conclusion.

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

We went out to lunch Saturday to celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary. We went to Baba’s Hummus House where they make some of the best hummus I have ever eaten. Not that James doesn’t make great hummus, he does, but this stuff is amazing.

During the week there was a tofu stir fry with some freshly dug sunchokes. For dinner this evening James roasted two of the smaller butternut squashes from the garden and made butternut squash mac and cheese. To his version he added broccoli and tempeh. So very delicious.