A report from Edward Mazria, an architect who turned to spreading information about global warming and the contribution to it by the building industry, has produced a set of images showing what he predicts some large coastal cities in the US will look like in 2030, with rising water levels due to global warming. His work is featured in an ABC news report, What Global Warming Looks Like.

Meanwhile, arctic ice melt has opened a Northwest Passage.

Thanks to The Daily Grail for the links.

I wonder, because reading
so inevitably
pushes me to write.
I wonder, and I even worry.

What if I’d never seen a poem?
Might I burst apart one day
from the pressure of too much
held in too long? Could I have learned,

even as slowly as I do, how to
forge words into a proper
plough to break the heart’s earthy
crust? Could I witness the drop

of soft rain on edgy leaves of thought, see
sun poured on a cloud and stars suspended
in a faint array, high and deep in a black sky?
Would I sense the ruddy pulse of Mars?

What if I’d never known a poem
can sing me to sleep at night,
can single out the imperfections
and perfect whole of a lily pond?

Who would I be, or what?
Where could I go? Who started this?
I want to send the first poet flowers and
lily dreams, across the bridge of time.

Copyright © 2007 Barbara W. Klaser

This has been a good summer for butterflies in my little corner of the world. I’ve seen a lot more variety this year than in past years, and yesterday I sighted a Western Tiger Swallowtail in a pepper tree in the yard behind ours. It surprised me, and at first glance I thought I was seeing an oriole making like a butterfly, it was so large. I haven’t seen many swallowtails since I was a kid, and then I usually saw darker, smaller ones, maybe the Anise Swallowtail, which looks more familiar to me. I think the most common butterfly of my childhood was the Mourning Cloak, but I rarely see those now.