Resilience Amid Disruption

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(As a reminder, from my Disclaimer page: this site is not an official site of the University of Northern Colorado. The views expressed here are entirely those of the author, and do not represent the views of the University of Northern Colorado, the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science at UNC, nor any other program or individual at the university.)

Call to Action (if this is too long for you to read): Do one small thing to build resilience. And please share a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies that doesn’t require eggs.

Do you ever feel your words drowning before they pass through your lips? Like the rain beginning to fall just before sunrise. There’s something there that needs to shine out, but it gets lost in shadows. That is where my voice has been these past several months, lost in the shadows.

The world has zapped my energy. Floods, fires, drought, heat wave. Along with other climate scientists, I have spent the last 25 years shouting ‘the sky is falling’ over and over. Now that it is falling, many choose to be blind – afraid that recognizing it for what it is will ruin the world we’ve worked so hard to build. Sorry. The ruin is happening now because not enough people (especially people with power and money) have paid attention.

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Ode to Our Little Buddha

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The vet said he wouldn’t make it to New Year’s Day. It was mid-December when he stopped eating. His kidneys were failing, she said. He was already quite far along. He also had hypothyroidism and a heart murmur. His little body was shutting down. He had a good run, at almost 16 years. We were given saline fluids and needles to administer 150ml under the scruff of his neck each night, too keep him comfy as long as we could. It doesn’t seem like a lot of fluid, but it took 4-5 minutes for that much fluid to flow under his skin. That’s a long time to hold still for a cat who likes to squirm. I asked him every time: Is this ok? Can we give you fluids? And he let us carry him to the kitchen table.

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Shining the light on the ground beneath my feet

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Have you ever looked down and found that you are standing on something rather unexpected?

I grew up in a place that experienced frequent small earthquakes. If you have ever felt one, you know that no matter how small the movement of the solid earth beneath you, it always throws you off center. Sometimes you feel like it must be in your head, this sudden motion from something that felt so solid. You might feel a bit queasy, a bit off balance, like the world isn’t as it seems. If you’ve studied a bit of geology, you’ll know that there’s a whole world beneath your feet that you really can’t see with your own eyes – and it’s always moving and shifting.

Walking on solid earth…we hope.
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Gratitude to you all for 2023

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(Long post! If you’re short on time, you can scroll for the photos!)

This past year was pretty spectacular. Some people say that about every year (except 2020). Some people say every year sucks (especially 2020). Most years we experience a mix of joy with other things – sometimes really difficult. But I feel lucky: this past year brought so many people into my life, and I need to acknowledge how much of an impact they have all had on me.

So, for my 2023 reflections, I decided to share with you all a photo collage of all the people that sweetened my life this year!

Autumn in Rocky Mountain Park!

The problem is that when I started combing through my photo collection (which contains thousands from 2023 alone), I suddenly found myself with nearly 50 photos that I felt I HAD to post. That’s way too many for one blog post! So as you scroll through the people that made my life amazing in 2023, please know that this does not include everyone!

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Termites and Gibbon Songs in Cat Tien National Park, Vietnam

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We sat on long benches in the middle of large flatbed trucks with 50 of our closest friends as we trundled along a lightly paved road in the fading dusk. Our night safari tour guide at Cat Tien National Park stood at the front of the flat bed, leaning on the back of the cab of the truck, his searchlight scanning the landscape and the lower branches of trees that sometimes came rather close to our heads. Large termites, drawn to the light, joined our tour.

The termites come out to interact with tourists on the night safari at Cat Tien National Park.

They landed in people’s hair and pelted us on the forehead and cheeks. We should have known that this would be our closest wildlife encounter. But no one wanted photos of the bugs. Cell phones were trained on the landscape beyond, where we occasionally spotted deer – large and small – grazing in the wide-open grassland. I only managed to get photos of the termites.

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Snapshots from another sinking city

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My room on the 9th floor of the Sheraton had a view out across Sông Cần Thơ River that runs along south side of the city of Cần Thơ. After a morning at Cần Thơ University listening to students’ proposals to build climate change resilience, my brain felt tired but inspired. Foremost on my mind was this: What is it that gives you hope when your world is sinking? How do you plan for a future that might be underwater?

Sunset over the city of Cần Thơ in the Mekong Delta.
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Preparing our students to build a new world

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On the first day we talked about clouds. I needed a hook, and, given the abundance of different cloud types one can observe in the city of Dalat in a day (sometimes even in an hour), this seemed like a good place to start a short course on Tropical Meteorology and Climate Change. Who doesn’t like clouds? My first class in Vietnam was not unlike a first class in any of my other courses back home. I had the same objectives: I wanted to know my students. I wanted them to understand what we can expect from each other and from the course. I wanted them to feel excited for what we about to learn together.

With students at the University of Dalat, after we learned to sketch out patterns of global atmospheric circulation.
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Singapore’s unwelcome parting gift

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Note: I’ve been back in Colorado for the past month, but still have a lot of stories to share with you from Vietnam. I first wrote this post in April and debated whether to publish it. People – especially in the US – get really sensitive when you remind them about the pandemic – or about masking. I wrote this mostly to process my own emotions around getting COVID for the first time (hopefully the only time, but I really doubt it). So, this post sat in a folder, neglected until this week, when, once again here in the US, I had a bunch of reminders that COVID is still floating around and impacting people’s lives every day.

Singapore sent me off with an unwelcome parting gift. When you have successfully avoided the plague for three years (especially while living in the US), you start to get a little cocky. You see advertisements for studies of ‘people who have never tested positive for COVID-19’ and you think: Yes, that’s me! I’ve never tested positive!

If you really want to avoid COVID, N95s work really well! This one from 3M is comfortable enough to wear on an 11 hour flight.

But when you wear a mask in public, avoid crowds and indoor gatherings, generally do your shopping online, and find yourself checking for hand sanitizer and a mask in your bag as religiously as you check for your phone and your keys, it IS possible to avoid the virus. N95 masks are spectacular protection, based on my experience on several trans-oceanic flights where I’m now sure there is always someone who is COVID positive on board.

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Life on Trần Khánh Dư Road

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A tall jacaranda tree across the road from my apartment bloomed thin bright purple flowers all through the spring. The blossoms would carpet the road across from the neighborhood trash bin. It was a nice contrast to the piles of food scraps and plastic bottles that some how end up outside the bin. But one day, a crew came along and took out the whole tree. I almost cried at the sound of the chain saws. I had grown so accustomed to seeing that tree. At least they waited until it had finished blooming.

My view of the jacaranda tree – until they cut it down.
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The Garden City at the ITCZ

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Is it possible to create a world where 10 billion people (the estimated number of people on Earth in the year 2100) and nature live sustainably and in harmony with each other? I wondered if Singapore might have some answers for me.

Singapore’s distinctive sky line at sunset.

When I left the US for Vietnam more than three months ago, I hadn’t anticipated I’d end up in Singapore for a couple of weeks. I only had a 3-month work visa for Vietnam, so I knew I would likely have to go somewhere to renew it. Other Fulbrighters suggested Singapore for the quick turnaround time on visas at the Vietnamese embassy. I was also curious about this tiny country that is also a very large city of six million people on the tip of the Malaysian Peninsula. This is a country that has become a global center for business, commerce and culture, and espouses its commitment to sustainable development goals. But it’s probably most well known among tourists abroad for its gardens, its ‘Supertrees’, and buildings that drip with green foliage in the city center.

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