114. And the World Goes on....

Las Vegas, short on water, is imposing a ban on “useless grass.” Brown lawns and alternative plant-scaping are popular in rainy Portland. John Wesley Powell said—over 100 years ago—that most of the West was dry and unfit for agriculture. He thought that much of the West should be left to “barbarous” Indians, who could make their way in it. Powell, like many men of science in his day, was racist; he divided the world’s peoples into the savage, the barbarous, and the civilized. His views on land-use hold up better than his views on race and culture. 

Drought conditions continue to plague the West, CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising, global temperatures making the same upward ride, and we are bracing for another big wildfire season. 

Meanwhile, economies are “opening,” the local restaurants are full, and the license plates on Main Street in Joseph say North Carolina, Alaska, and Texas as well as the familiar Idaho and Washington. 

House prices in our state and county continue to rise with the temperature. There are large new houses on the hill outside of Enterprise; it’s been platted for years, but the urban-suburban flight seems to have ignited development now. There is also a new housing development of over forty lots at the edge of Joseph. 

Covid-19 itself, morphing and mutating as it reaches the farthest corners of the globe, is still here. Like water flowing downhill, Covid follows paths towards human density and poverty There are talks and plans about getting vaccine to these global hot spots, but it’s a daunting task; there are so many of them in Central and South America, in India, Malaysia. Some of the smaller countries that had escaped the first waves with strict practices of distancing masking, and isolating have opened up to economics—and the Covid. 

In our own country the vaccine deniers and resisters are still with us. And although the numbers of infections and deaths continue a downward trend, the disease is still here, and still mutating. Are the continuing Covid deaths totally or largely among the unvaccinated? I’ve not seen any statistics on that. 

Unfortunately, even if statistics showed that the vaccinated are not getting sick and not dying, while much higher numbers of the unvaccinated are, it would probably move into more rancor. 

We remain stubbornly divided. 

# # #