You can't get theah from heah...

The Northeast Kingdom of Vermont is washing away. That's not hyperbole; St. Johnsbury is almost impossible to get into or out of this morning. Another storm swept through last night and dumped over 7 inches of rain on the already pummeled areas around us. There's new damage, there's worsened situations, and the Passumpsic River is not expected to crest until this afternoon. We have new/ worsened damage here in Littleton, as well, but nothing like that. I sure hope that the FEMA reports have been done in pencil; the totals are rising as fast as the water, and people's hearts are sinking like the road beds. People I know are stranded in their homes, no roads left, and the water is rising in their basements. 

If we don't figure out how to convince folks that the climate emergency is upon us, then nothing will change. Likely, nothing will for generations, even if we could "fix" this right now, but at least we will be trying to correct a deadly course that is almost exclusively human-created. That can that has been kicked down the road just fell into a sinkhole with "our future" written all over it.

But in the short term, businesses, homes, farms are all experiencing devastating and permanent losses. The iconic Miss Lyndonville Diner will not reopen; they've had enough. If you went to Lyndon State (or any of its incarnations in the last decade), that was the place you could get a decent breakfast, meet friends, and nurse a hangover or wake up after an all-nighter writing papers. I was just thinking this morning, there's no way to get to either of the local branches of my credit union if I had to; Dells Road in Littleton is washed out-- it was scheduled to be closed today for major sewer repairs, and now it's even worse. And the main branch in St. J is on Route 5, and well, that's more than a little wet. Neither of those businesses were built on what we'd normally consider a flood plain or in harm's way, but things have changed. 

We are living in a literal metaphor: the crumbling under foot due to so much water is also a symbol of the crumbling of a lot of things that shore up our country. Not listening to science, not investing in real infrastructural management, not listening to education, just leaving the underlying problems of all kinds to future generations will only serve to sink us all.

Please check out news outlets for pictures and how you can help. Folks need it badly.

C