Dear Editor,
The word occurred to me this morning in light of a multiplying deluge of overwhelming & prodigiously consequential nationwide & worldwide events in recent days, weeks, months & years, brought to mind by something that occurred in my backyard yesterday afternoon as I absentmindedly awaited the beautiful, long anticipated & hopefully drought ending rain we gloried in Tuesday.
Racing the much-anticipated rain, I thoughtlessly & arguably, self-centeredly decided to burn off the pile of limbs that had accumulated over the past weeks in our back yard burn pit. I had water nearby & knew it would burn off in minute and didn’t think further. But in the minute or so it took to turn the limbs to ash, I found myself looking up at the obviously anxious faces of three of my wonderful, attentive & observant neighbors.
They were either fearful of a conflagration of immense proportions in my, and potentially their back yards or wanted to identify the culprit who would take it upon themselves to break the county-wide burning ban, or more likely, a combination thereof.
Needless to say, the fire was out & the embers doused in moments and this morning, properly penitent, I sent my apologies to all three for needlessly inducing their fears.
However, it occurred to me this morning, in a moment of retrospection, as the rain continued to patter down, that my little incident of potential conflagration, might reflect on something just a little bigger.
Are we as a society, by our thoughtless, self-centered disregard for the health of our planet and our fellow inhabitants, sitting here blithely unaware in our backyards & living rooms, while a real conflagration of immeasurably immense proportions, not only looms over us, but threatens, right now, to not only engulf us, but our progeny and our home, our irreplaceable, God given planet?
- Climate change & its results: drought, pestilence, water & food shortages with resulting
Jim Martin
Perryville
