A month of rain

It has rained on and off in Oslo for nearly a month now, sometimes heavily, other times lightly. Each day we wake up and hope for sun, sunshine, warmth--for the crisp, cool days of autumn punctuated by sunny blue skies. But apparently, it's not to be, not this year. I have no idea how much longer this weather is expected to continue. If it's too hot or too cold (extremes), people will complain. But I never complain that it is too sunny outside. And I don't complain when it rains a few days here or there. But this type of rainy weather that we have now is irksome. I'm glad I got most of my garden prep work for the winter done during September and early October. I've been in the garden a few times during the past few weeks; the ground is muddy and slippery, the grass is a soggy, sloppy mess, and the air is damp and chilly. Not very inviting to spend time there. 

In the summer of 2018, Western Europe experienced a heat wave for several weeks that was often referred to as a 'heat dome' that had situated itself over that area; it led to drought-like conditions. I remember it well because we were traveling in England and Ireland at the time, and most of the vegetation we saw was not green, but brown. Everything had dried up or dried out. These weeks of rain I will be labeling a 'rain dome' even though I know there is no such thing in meteorology. I've read that some meteorologists have stated that this is normal autumn weather. I reply unequivocally that it is not. There is nothing normal about this weather. 

Anyone who states that climate change is a hoax is simply not registering what is going on around them. It doesn't matter to me whether the climate change is natural or manmade. The point is that it's happening all around us. I am not very optimistic that we will be able to do much to reverse it. Perhaps we will be able to slow it down, but it's not encouraging to witness the increase in the number of hurricanes, the increase in hurricane intensities, the melting of the glaciers in Greenland, the melting of the polar caps, the rising sea levels, and the steadily increasing instability of the atmosphere. This past summer in Oslo had to be one of the windiest on record. I gauge that by how many times we were out on the boat; I don't go out on the boat when it's windy because I don't like the resultant choppy water. I was on the boat about three or four times this past summer. That's not a lot compared to other summers where the weather has been more stable. 

It is said that one can get used to pretty much anything. I hope that is the case. Humankind in the twenty-first century has a lot of formidable challenges in store for it. I don't think all of the challenges can be met or tackled. For the first time in my life, I see the limitations of our human existence and of science. We live after all on a planet in a universe that is constantly expanding. There is no reason to expect that our planet will remain stable in terms of its meteorology. And there is no reason to expect that mankind can win against the forces of nature and the universe.

'To know the earth as poetry'

This resonated with me, and I wanted to share it with you. This is mostly how I feel these days. There is a time for everything under the heavens. I'm hoping that the intense pressure to achieve, compete, win, and work till you drop will lessen, and that the stress associated with all of these things will disappear. I've had a lifetime of these things, and I no longer want them. I want quiet, peace, calm and relaxation for the foreseeable future. Maybe in a few years I'll want to rejoin the fray in one form or another. But right now, I want to leave the fray behind. 

IO--a love story between a young woman and the planet she calls home

I watched the sci-fi film IO on Netflix last night. It is the story of Earth's demise, through the eyes of a young woman, Sam, who has only known an Earth that is headed for destruction. She was born into a world that was dying--animals, birds, humans. Global warming led to changes in the earth's atmosphere that could not sustain life any longer. The only places where there still remained enough pockets of oxygen were in mountainous areas, and that is where her scientist father moved her and her mother. He wanted to find a way to save the Earth; most other surviving humans have made the long trek to Io, one of Jupiter's moons, which apparently can support life. Sam is one of the few remaining humans on Earth, and she spends her days carrying on her father's work, looking for evidence of life/new life down in the Zone (the city), which is completely barren and devoid of all life. She drives an ATV and always has a supply of oxygen with her. On the top of the mountain where she lives, she tends to living plants that she has managed to grow in a greenhouse, a surprising development. She also has a huge telescope so that she can look at the night sky and at Io, where her engineer boyfriend Elon lives. They carry on a long-distance relationship characterized mostly by loneliness. And then one day Micah comes into her life, arriving in a hot-air balloon. He has come to visit her father after his wife died; both of them listened to her father's advice to stay on Earth rather than leave for Io, while he researched ways of making humans and animals able to adapt to the new atmosphere. That decision proved fatal for his wife. Sam tells him that her father has taken a trip to another part of the mountains on a research mission and that he is due home in a few days. Micah accepts this at first, but after several days, he begins to understand that things are not what they seem. He finds out that Sam's father is dead, as is her mother, and that she is living there alone. He decides to take her with him in the balloon to the site of the last shuttle launch that is leaving for Io. He doesn't want to leave her on Earth alone. Sam seems determined to join him, especially after they both become romantically involved, and after she finds out that Elon is leaving on a ten-year mission to Proxima Centauri. She understands that she and Elon will never be together, and that pushes her toward Micah. But things are not what they seem.

I won't give away the ending to the film, but I found it to be moving. It touched me that a young woman who had never known an Earth that was healthy, was so determined to restore it to its previous beauty, to help it to survive. It touched me that she did not want to give up on this planet, that she believed (foolishly perhaps) that it could be saved. The ending is ambiguous; one is unsure if it is a dream or reality. I chose to believe that it was reality.

The film has gotten mostly negative reviews in the media, on Imdb and elsewhere. I will admit that it might have benefited from tighter editing as it dragged in some places. And the science part of it was full of holes and mistakes. But I was drawn in by the story, and that is what makes a film work for me. If it touches my heart, then it works for me. It was not a sappy film, nor was it an upbeat one. It was simply a film that describes our perhaps not-so-distant future. Make of that what you will. If global warming brings about an end to our way of life on this planet, there will be people who will want to stay on Earth to try to save it, and those who will leave it behind. It is not always so easy to know what one would do and that is what the film tries to portray. I think it managed to do that despite its flaws. If you are looking for Alien, I am Legend, or Interstellar, this is not any of those films (it couldn't be anyway because it is very low-budget). Monsters are not waiting in the dark places to attack, and there is no impressive interplanetary space travel or talk of tesseracts. However, like Interstellar, it touched me because at heart, it is really a love story. In Io's case, it is a love story between a young woman and the planet she calls home.

Skies that remind me that we live on a planet

Some of the early morning skies were spectacular during the month of September, and when I was up early, I was able to photograph them. Some of the shots I took remind me that we live on a planet; the cloud covers and formations give me that feeling of living in a universe. I get the same feeling when I look out upon the stars on a clear night. Fun fact for the day: the Earth moves at about 100,000 km/h (about 67,000 miles per hour) around the Sun, in case you were wondering.