A C. T U. A L. L Y

The expected confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the seat on the Supreme Court held by Ruth Bader Ginsburg has serious negative implications for America’s response to the global climate crisis. THIS IS THE DATA Greenland’s ice is melting faster than at any time in the past 12,000 years, and the melting of the Antarctic ice cap will continue even if the global temperature rises by no more than 2C.   These ice melts are likely to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.   The Guardian Greenland On July 28, 2020, the temperature in Baghdad hit 125.2°F, the highest ever recorded.   Two days earlier, two protesters were shot dead by security forces during demonstrations over the failure of the city’s electricity grid.   WaPo Baghdad This June, July, and August were the hottest ever recorded in the northern hemisphere, according to US government scientists at NOAA, surpassing the records set in 2016 and 2019. Guardian By September 24, 2020, over five...

These photos were taken on October 8, our last day this year at Valuberti, the borgo of eight stone houses from the 1800's, located in Tuscany between Cortona and Arezzo.  This is where we lived for five years 11 (!!) years ago.   Lots of sweet and bittersweet memories here, inspiring beauty, and welcome peace. This is SP39, the provincial road I take for my late afternoon walks. About 1 kilometer down SP39 is a dirt road turn-off to the left.   It’s a logging road that leads through a woods to this brook.   Since we’d had a big storm a few days earlier, the brook was rushing so loudly, I could hear it from the road. These crocus-like flowers were blooming among the rocks along SP39.  My husband had noticed them from the car earlier that morning on his way to his favorite cappuccino bar.  I didn’t see another bunch like them in the three kilometers I walked.   As I approached to take this shot, a large blue-black bee stopped to gather some pollen. ...

At home here in Tuscany, not far from Florence, while worrying about the wildfires in California and the dumpster fires in Washington, D.C., it occurred to me:   If Dante Alighieri were Trump’s speech writer, what words might he put in the Covid death cult leader’s mouth?   Among the many apposite passages, I find this soliloquy from The Inferno frighteningly Trumpish, and disturbingly like something Jim Jones might have said to his Jonestown followers as he poured the Kool-Aid. Hope not ever to see Heaven.   I have come to lead you to the other shore; Into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice. I am the way into the city of woe, I am the way into eternal pain, I am the way to go among the lost. Justice caused my high architect to move, Divine omnipotence created me, The highest wisdom, and the primal love. Before me there were no created things But those that last forever—as do I. Abandon all hope you who enter here. ― Dante Alighieri, Inferno ...