Early and Long Winter?

We all know by now that the only constant is change. Most of us also realize that humans are the biggest contributors to an ever accelerating rate of change. Scientists have warned us for years that we are causing changes so fast that our planet's ability to heal itself has been affected. We have entered the anthropocene - the time in our planet's history that the rate of species extinction has caused a dramatic decline on the earth's diversity and that rate is caused by us.

We are on a spaceship (the earth) that is following our sun, spiraling around the sun, as it travels  through space. It may be the closest the vast majority of us ever get to actually flying though space in an actual human-made spaceship. Even if spaceships are actually produced, they will not affect the almost eight billion of us that will never leave the earth. (The earth's human population is now expected to level off at around 11 billion. 11,000,000,000 humans!) Only an extremely small percentage of humans will ever travel on those Star Trek or Star Wars ships.

We've been told that climate change will increase the swings, the changes, and we are all experiencing those changes. Caused by us. The increase in the severity of storms, the changes in temperatures, winds, erosion, sea levels have just begun.

Sunday evening, through Monday, and up to Tuesday morning here we had out first winter storm - in the fall. Before winter. About 9 inches of snow fell here. Kit and I missed our first class on Tuesday because the roads were bad because of the storm. Early Wednesday morning I drove to nearby Bad Axe in 9 degree (Fahrenheit!) temperatures. Leaves were still on many trees - frozen. White Christmases are not common here because winter has barely begun by December 25th so we don't often have snow on the ground.

Be kind for everyone is fighting a battle 

you know nothing about.  Granchester

 Tolerance, good temper, and sympathy - 

they are what matter really.

If the human race is not to collapse, they (tolerance, good temper, and sympathy) 

must come to the front before long. 

E.M. Forster

We are all feeling our normal winter time "cabin fever" about two months early. There are still a few autumn clean up jobs I didn't get to. Oh well! I even put out bird feeders early because I felt so sorry for my feathered buddies.