This week, two magazines arrived on my Rockport desk……one, The Economist, warned me about the Brazilian presidential election about to take place, the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, suggesting he might not accept the outcome, a message we have heard before…..and, yes, he is the same guy advocating Amazonian deforestation, to clear more land on which to grow the soy and corn with which to feed the pigs and cattle more of the world’s close-to-eight-billion people want to eat. While we all know cutting down rain forests damages habitat, degrades soil, pollutes rivers and land. Trees in the Amazon make their own rainfall – on a normal day, the Amazon releases 20 billion tons of moisture into the atmosphere, seeding the clouds with rain…and, BTW, fewer trees = more sun = higher temps.

The other, the Sierra Club’s Sierra, in an article by Jeremy Miller, told me again that the Colorado River water is disappearing at an alarming rate. When the Hohokams lived in the Sonoran Desert, where I now live, they created a “complex network of canals that at their zenith was some 500 miles in length.” That water grew melons and squash and beans, and later, the lettuce we love to eat. Less water, less lettuce.

Because of planet earth’s daily eastward rotation, causing weather to move from west to east, beautiful Cape Ann will be affected by that weather too. It’s a done deal.