People talk about the weather here when it slows them down. In other words, snowstorms, heavy snow squalls, and windstorms that topple over semis and bring down electrical and phone lines merit further discussion. But further discussion about rain – only if one lives near a river and the water comes over the banks and takes out the house underpinnings.

People from all over the country have gravitated to this part of the world. There is a high degree of stoicism in those from Minnesota and Texas; in fact, this is where the majority of people around

here come from. They are used to inclement conditions in the former, and most (but not all) of those from Texas have, in the past, dealt with tornados and plagues and pestilence.

This high degree of stoicism isn’t admirable. It’s unhealthy. I think we all need to vent more, maybe by going outside and raising our hands high and screaming at the sky.

Rather, everyone just keeps doing whatever they do so well. And they remain impervious to the rain. You don’t see many around here carrying umbrellas, and most don’t even have head coverings.

What gives?

Those who are naysayers about climate change have it coming to them. They will go down with the rest of us. They won’t be contrite. Rather, they’ll say something about climate change being God’s will.

I don’t think that God has anything to do with this because I don’t believe that there’s a god. This whole idea of a greater, wiser, all knowing human being is very self-serving. Do we really think we have been created in another’s image and likeness? How arrogant is that? If there is a god, she is an opossum and keeps her young, her little ones, in her pouch. This also means that she has sex, routinely with another opossum.

Might I rot in hell for articulating this? There is only one way to find out.

I pause, for this is very weighty subject matter. And someone out there might read it. No one in my family will read this because I only have one surviving family member, and she doesn’t read these dispatches.

Which brings us to the question, why do I keep writing them? I have begun to think that after the big one hits, that just a handful of people are going to be left.

And amongst this handful are going to be one or maybe two people, who will of course reproduce themselves the way the opossum has. Several generations from now, one of these individuals is going to turn on this computer and after breaking the English language code, start reading my dispatches. This individual will then get an idea (which she will pass on) as to what life was like early in the twenty-first century.

And yes, they will read about the time in which there was rain, lots of rain.

Next: 252. 9/14/22: Sunshine