The sky is falling
I’ve had one glass of wine and the sky is orange, so I thought it was a good time to write a blog. In western Oregon, by September it is typically cooler and starting to feel like the rain is coming soon. Often I’m already in hoodies and jeans by now. But not this year. It’s September and we are in the middle of a week of crazy hot weather.
Last weekend, I dropped a crew off to float the irrigation canal that runs next to the mountain house. Remarkably, we’ve never done that before—although we have had renters talk about it in the guest book. It takes about an hour and a half of sitting in an uncomfortable tube and involves cold water, so I’m out. But I had a blissfully quiet house for an hour.
We have survived the first few days of “soft start” virtual school, which was really all orientation and figuring out which platform to go to for which teacher (i.e., Zoom or Google or Canvas). Who knew schooling would evolve into a frantic search for the right link to get to class. And just when he had figured out how to get through the halls to class on time. But it’s good that they don’t have real content in class yet, until the kids know how to log in to each platform consistently. And I’m pretty proud that I have stopped calling it “fake school”. Let’s give us a fighting chance to learn something this year.
Still I spent an hour yesterday on tech support in between work Skype and Zoom calls. We couldn’t figure out how to turn in an assignment because the “Submit’ button did not work. My real problem is that they keep scheduling the library book drop off for days when I have back-to-back meetings. Can’t they just put out a drop box like at the public library?
It’s still amazing to me that it has come to this. All because of the America myth of ‘individualism’ and that’s why people can’t wear masks? Because politicians cannot get elected on platforms and have to use fear and conflict? Because Americans think they are invincible? None of it makes sense. (I mean, it’s predictable, but doesn’t make sense.) Especially that people are not holding their leadership accountable for so many people dying. I don’t know about other people, but I will occasionally get this shattered feeling when I see something mundane that is now empty or closed, or when I see people on the street in masks because it’s the new normal.
I feel like everyone has a slightly different definition of how they are being “COVID careful”. Some people are flying again. Some people won’t get on a plane for another year. Some people won’t even leave their house. Others are seeing people outside only, or inside with masks, or after a test. Others are just avoiding crowded places or public places entirely but seeing friends in small groups. And of course there is the whole segment of the population who doesn’t even believe they can catch it and is completely acting like everything is normal. Preventive health care is difficult even when there is consistent messaging. It’s impossible when no one in leadership cares or is trying to fight a disease.
But here in Oregon we have even bigger problems this week than fake, I mean virtual, school and a raging pandemic. We have fires. BIG fires. They announced on the news there was going to be a “wind event”. What a strange way of warning people of the apocalypse hell scape that is our air right now. What does that even mean? “wind event” (Sing it with me: who’s tripping down the streets of the city? Smiling at everybody she sees. It’s windy.) Not exactly terrifying. But the crazy firestorm that is Oregon this week, that’s terrifying. It’s really hard to explain how orange and yellow it is outside. Like everything is bathed in an eerie Mars light. And I spent way too long trying to load interactive forest maps to see if my co-workers might be losing their houses as we speak. (They are evacuated or on standby.)
Part of the issue is the wind is blowing backwards from the direction it typically blows. (It is #2020 after all.) See, normally, the Jet stream brings weather from the ocean inland and the wind blows east. But this week, the wind is blowing with gusts up to 75 miles per hour, east to WEST. Guess where most of the houses are in Oregon? WEST. I just read that in Oregon and Washington 515,000 acres burned in 24 hours. How is that even a thing that can happen?
So we have bigger problems than the Submit button on the homework assignment. I’m frantically worried about people’s houses, the critters wild and domesticated, and not to mention widespread power outages on the first or second week of school for large portions of the state. (Several of our teachers had to go to the near-empty school to have internet access and power today.)
Praying the wind dies down and the sky is blue instead of yellow tomorrow because that will mean people’s houses are safe. But I’m posting this blog as a dispatch from the surface of Mars, because that’s how it feels tonight.