An original acrylics painting, on stretched canvas
12 X 24", unframed
( click on image to enlarge )
Most Americans are familiar with the unexpected weather stretches, which are
commonly called Indian summers. That name generally refers to an unusually warm
period of days, in late autumn, following regular nights of deep freezes, which have frosted
and bleached the landscape, and put the earth to sleep for the winter. But now that the
global weather system is becoming ever more erratic, and unpredictable, unseasonable,
weather conditions, which we used to think of as rare, are becoming every day events.
We see the results of these, increasingly deadly, weather events in our newspapers and
on television every day now, and many of us experience the traumas first hand.
Right now, the states along the eastern side of our country, are experiencing record-
breaking, torrential rains and flooding, forcing people to evacuate their homes and
businesses, and causing severe economic damages. While at the same time, in our
drought-stricken, western states, the record-breaking, uncontrollable, wild fires, are
sweeping over thousands of acres of land, consuming hundreds of homes, as well as
the people who are getting trapped and are unable to escape the intense fury of the
deadly, fire storms. California used to have a period of the year which they referred
to as the fire season, but global warming has changed that. Now they say the fire
season is the whole year long.
The American Plains Indians had a name for the uncontrollable and unstoppable
wild fires, which sometimes swept across the prairies, in great, long waves. They called it
Red Buffalo, because of the similarities to the uncontrollable and unstoppable nature of
the enormous herds of bison, which could sweep across the land and over everything in
their paths, in a massive tide of horns and hooves.
The Indians considered themselves to be a part of the earth and everything on it.
For them, the concept of taking ownership of the earth, and then polluting and spoiling it
because of greed, was unthinkable. It would not have occurred to them, to ruinously
exploit their mother earth for nothing but monetary profit. But unfortunately, we have not
been such good custodians of the earth. Every day we are pumping more and more
green-house gasses into our atmosphere. And now comes word from our administration,
of plans to cut back on the new standards of control for auto-exhaust, air-pollution,
in order to increase car sales. Perhaps this administration needs a first-hand, up-close-
and-personal encounter with the Red Buffalo.
No comments:
Post a Comment