It’s Time Now

I made this picture a couple of years ago and it didn’t impress me. Then, a few nights ago, very late, I started tinkering with it. This image appeared. Ah ha, I thought. My first Halloween post. Since Halloween is almost over and Christmas is upon us — at least that what big box stores think — I thought that I’d better get going spooking you out.

We were going to dinner with some friends and we were waiting on the porch with this very simple ghost. Our friends were roaming about their house. “Where are my keys?” Where is my phone?” “No, that’s my phone.” “Where is my wallet?” “I’m not taking my purse, where is my driver’s license, cash and credit card?”

I’m not making fun of them. We are no better.

Anyway, I got bored and started taking pictures of this ghost. I had no idea of its potential.

And, now for something truly terrifying.

We listen to a lot of podcasts. The words below come from The New York Times Daily.

“This is where she is buried.” It was the only piece of dry land in a flooded city in Pakistan. It was marked with a few pieces of colored cloth. The woman talking had just lost her young daughter to Malaria as she sat on her daughter’s bed and stroked her head.

This is a crisis. This is the immediate aftermath of the results of climate change. We saw what Hurricane Ian did to Florida. Homes are lost. People died. An island is cut off from the mainland. Ian dropped seven inches of rain on us in Virginia. I lived through Hurricane Katrina and, on 16 years to the day, Hurricane Ida.

You know what I think. If we lose our home — The Earth — every other issue is meaningless.

Don’t gaslight me.

Climate change is real and it’s here.

Now.