Today is Monday, July 10, 2023. I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog that Elliot and I were caught in the flash flood warning extended to over 9 million people in the Northeast yesterday, including parts of New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maine – as well as across the country in Washington and Alaska. We were driving along the Whitestone Expressway on our way back from Huntington, Long Island, where we originally intended to see Richard E. Grant in The Lesson at the Huntington Cinema Arts Centre but ditched that to spend more time at a local bookstore called The Next Chapter, located on New York Avenue. We both bought books: Elliot bought the late Russell Banks’ book, Lost Memory of Skin and I bought a Richard Ford book, Let Me Be Frank with You.

Ford is well known for writing several books featuring the growth of one character by the name of Frank Bascombe who is now a retired realtor mostly in the same vein as the late author John Updike who wrote many books featuring one character also, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a middle-class everyman, a former high school basketball star, who is viewed from young adulthood all the way to death. Both Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His first book featuring Angstrom, Rabbit, Run was featured in Time‘s All-Time 100 Greatest Novels.

Even though we were tangentially affected by Sunday’s extreme weather, there were people all over the state who lost homes, belongings, and yes, even their lives, to this unprecedented weather event. A 35-year-old woman died yesterday, as she was swept away by floodwater as she tried to evacuate her Orange County home. This terrible event was covered in an online article by Lauren Mascarenhas, Nouran Salahieh, and Paradise Afshar entitled “Trapped drivers swam out of their cars. A woman died after being swept away by floodwaters. What to know about the heavy rainfall hitting the Northeast.”

As we began leaving Long Island, the sky became very overcast and no one could have predicted the terrible amount of rain that would fall in such a short span of time. Both parts of the roadway were flooded within minutes, it seemed. We thrashed through the high water with as much caution as we could muster. We did see some cars on the shoulder, but the majority of drivers plowed on through the pools of water without stopping. I can’t recall seeing something like this in the last 20 years or so.

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency warning for central Vermont on Monday, where 19 people have been rescued by boat and 25 others have been evacuated.

Two areas in the state, Weston and South Londonderry, are currently inaccessible due to flooding, and search and rescue teams are working to regain access and perform welfare checks.

Governor Phil Scott declared a state of emergency Sunday as the weather service warned flash flooding could become “extremely dangerous.”

Hitting close to home, Governor Kathy Hochul addressed the craziness of the extreme weather wreaking havoc in the state, saying, “My friends, this is the new normal.” Here more than eight inches of rain fell within a 24-hour period in some locations in the state.

This kind of chaotic weather can only be explained by climate change and it ain’t going to get better with time. Now I’m just hearing tonight about a television meteorologist who talked about climate change on an Iowa program and received death threats from irate listeners on the Rachel Maddow show. Can you believe this insanity? The man was talking about facts regarding the change in weather patterns and some boobs didn’t want to hear it; they went so far as to send the meteorologist death threats. Because of the myriad death threats that he received, the meteorologist was forced to resign his position at the news program. How sad!

How will we ever fix this potential planet-extinction crisis if we have so many stupid, science-averse people denying the reality of the situation? It really looks as if we’ve crossed the Rubicon when it comes to climate change if we have so many people preferring to remain ignorant on the matter!

This is so depressing since extremes in weather are not going to recede anytime soon. As we deal with flash flooding here in the Northeast, the middle of the country is grappling with intense heat. The temperature in Phoenix, Arizona, was 110 degrees today. I don’t think this is characteristic of typical weather patterns here.

Anyway, tomorrow marks my third gay reading club meeting at 6:30. The selection for tomorrow’s group discussion is the novel Blackbird by Larry Duplechan. Thank goodness, I read the book this time, but Elliot failed to finish it since he didn’t like it that much. Let’s see if he confesses his thoughts on the book to the participants tomorrow during the meeting. I recall that the last meeting coincided with the first orange haze enveloping the city in early June. I hope tomorrow’s weather will be somewhat “normal.” Thus I will not be here in this space tomorrow.

Have a good Tuesday.

Stay safe and be well.