The Daily Babble

Here's a little of what's happening in my North Coast world that might be of interest to your local life:

1. Rain. March was a rainy month, and so far April is starting out that way. We were getting Alaska weather in early March, now we seem to be getting the Northwest's. But with slightly more variety than Portland (with its afternoon Sun Breaks), or Seattle (the constant drizzle punctuated by steady rain) or Vancouver ( a sensible gray but with a peculiar luminosity.) We get sunshine with rain, wind with rain, thunder with rain, hail with rain, and of course the ever-popular rain with rain.

I've spent enough continuous time in the three above-named cities to gauge the moods they inspire in me. For one thing, I began to understand why they are cities of readers. There is something about their gray skies and the sound-muffling qualities of drizzle, its foggy but insistent rhythm that is a kind of natural white noise, that encourages the concentration on the page. It's a little more complicated here at the moment.

Others have far more serious problems due to the rain, which has been unusually frequent and heavy as far east and south as Sacramento and San Francisco. As the climate crisis effects become obvious not all that far north of us, we anxiously wonder what new climate patterns we are likely to inherit down here. So far it's just been crazy: a succession of unusual sunny days, this extra dollop of rain, plus hail, lightning, etc. that has been rare in my experience here, before this year.

Margaret is a weekend gardener during the school year spring, and the rain has been hard on her. She's made it a priority for every possible occasion, even to the point of missing Quaker Meeting on a sunny (or non-rainy) Sunday morning. She has become, she says, a foul weather Friend.

2. Gas prices. You think you have it bad? At last look, regular unleaded was $2.80 to $2.90 a gallon, with premium at $3.05 to $3.10. The newspapers are reporting gasoline theft---siphoning from parked cars, near or in trailer parks so far.

I don't need to drive much, but for people who drive from the most scenic countrysides to work in Arcata and Eureka in their trucks and SUVs and newer quality cars, gasoline is a major expense. As it is for almost all working people and many small businesses.

3. Salmon. It seems that the crisis in local Pacific salmon everyone has feared for years may become very obvious and real this year, as officials are contemplating a total ban on salmon takes from California waters this year. The culprits are multiple, from poor timber practices polluting waters and otherwise making the salmon lifecycle difficult, to dams on the rivers that are now nearly worthless for anything but killing salmon, to Bushite decisions to favor water from key rivers--the Klamath in particular--diverted to agribusiness elsewhere. Some solutions can be effected immediately (for next year) while others will take years to implement and have any effect. There's a good summary of the situation in the SF Chronicle here.

Out at sea, Climate Crisis effects on ocean temperature etc. are also likely to combine with decades of chemical pollution and industrialized overfishing that are already crashing one marine species after another. So local problems, which affect the local economy and the deepest cultural convergences in the various Native and non-Native (including generations of native-born) populations, are going to be repeated elsewhere. But for here, the loss of salmon is a loss of an identity that goes back many centuries. The solutions to this one may be on the way, but it's a teachable moment, for sure.