Awakening To Rain

I was awakened in the middle of the night to the most beautiful, pleasant sound I coul dhave imagined; that of rain falling gently but steadily on the ground, and the roof of my house. Here in the great Amerian lower mid west, or the northwest south, whichever you prefer, we have been stricken with a long drought, and just in the past couple of days rain has arrived to save us. I live in the foothills to the Ozark Mountains, in heavily forested rolling hills, with many small streams and rivers, in a very small town on top of a plateau, altogether a pleasant locations and environment. I haven't travelled the world, but I have travelled the United States, and in my opinion the U.S. is an incredibly beautiful country, naturally. The human additions additions to the landscape are of course dabatable in terms of what they contribute to the landscape, whether we Americans and our America makes the land more or less attractive,is the topic of potential intense, heated, intelligent discussion and debate. The older I get, the more amenable I am to talking about the weather, or writing about it, in which case I always and inevitably include climate change in the conversation. If somebody says to me "have a nice day" I might say somethig like "this is one of those days when I kinda like climate change". If nothing else, that kind of comment has a chance of making people think.The people I pa attention to, and there really aren't all that many people in my life, either face to face or through the media, but thsoe that I know never seem to mention global warming or climate change, much less actually talk about it. And when on some rare occasion thay actually mention or talk about it, they usually fail to cut to the chase, preferring instead to make some flippant off hand semi serious or non serious blather. The fact is, as things stand no, we're toast. By "we". I mean humanity and all other species. By now there should be a comprehensive, world wide project well underway to save the planet by reversing and stopping global warming--climate change, because if we don't, we're toast. Each year is about one degree hotter than the previous. As things stand now, within five years the summers are going to be unliveable, wich daily chorching hot temperatures, week after week, month after month. It isn't going to be pleasant or pretty, and we are going to see it, soon. What we humans must do of course is to change our society, clean up the planet, and take better care of it, and ourselves. Billions of automobiles spewing tons carbon into the atmosphere every day is a dead end, and we are fast approaching it. Electric cars, mass transit, and bicycles are, we pray, saving us just in the nick of time. The remaining climate change doubters must accept reality, and notice that climate change deniers are, overwhelmingly, politically conservative and religious. When your political or religious viewpoint prevents you from acknowledging reality, like, say, climate change, you definitely have a problem, intellectually, if not emotionally. I hope I live a while longer, but know that my time is running out. While I am still here, I want to encourage myself and everybody to live joyfully and harmoniously. Although we still seem to have no real idea precisely what we and the univese are, we are sufficiently perceptive to sense its magnificence, and to be appreciative of it.