The past becomes present

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I grew up with stories of the great depression. My parents lives were shaped by the dirty thirties. They were children when the wall street crash occurred, and knew very little of the stock market and its impact on the wider economy. What they did know was the shortage of money and the incredible weather they witnessed. Who they were and who I became is also influenced by the major historical event of their young adult years - World War II. I know some stories of my parents during the war years, but stories of the depression marked many family gatherings. Aunts and Uncles and other relatives all had stories to share. My father’s family was struggling to hang onto the family farm near Minnewaukan, North Dakota, and might have lost the farm were it not for a special depression refinancing program of the Bank of North Dakota. North Dakota had dozens of social programs during the Depression that made a huge difference to farm families. The Bank of North Dakota and the North Dakota Mill and Elevator Company were owned by the state and those two institutions provided the small margin by which the farm survived those tough years.

I heard many stories, in my growing up years, of Black Sunday, when the storms were so severed and the dust clouds were so dense that the sun could not be seen for an entire day. I imagined those storms and looked at the historic pictures like the one in this journal post of dark clouds rolling in and overwhelming everything.

Stories of the depression and how folks survived came to me from the family I married into as well. I know about barn dances thrown to make a few extra dollars and “lemonade” that was sold on the side. I can re-tell stories of working on the county road crew for $1 per day and being grateful for the job.

With all of those stories in my memory from years of growing up, Thursday’s windstorm that swept across the Dakotas stirred some intense emotions. Winds exceeded 100 mph in Tripp, South Dakota. That isn’t the speed of the winds in a tornado, though there were tornadoes spawned by the storm. The straight-line winds of the rapidly-moving storm were above 90 mph in several communities across the central and eastern portions of the state.

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The worst of the storms did not affect the side of South Dakota where we lived. The Black Hills are a unique geographical feature with their own weather. It was out on the open prairies where the winds and dust blew. At least two people in South Dakota and another in Minnesota have died as direct results of the storms.

Extreme weather stories continue to come from around the globe. Hay River, in the Northwest Territories of Canada, south of Great Slave Lake, is completely flooded. All 4,000 residents of the community as well as members of nearby First Nation communities have been affected. Ice jammed the Hay River as it flows into the lake and waters from recent rains backed up and overwhelmed the city. The airport is closed. Just getting emergency supplies and help to the town is a huge challenge.

Flooding has been the major story in Queensland in Australia for nearly a month. Just a couple of days ago officials reported another missing person due to water overflowing local roads. Reservoir levels are high and officials have been forced to release water from them, causing downstream flooding. Record heavy rains continue to fall through the entire region.

Cyclones and dust storms, fires and floods, stories of disaster abound all around the world. All life depends on a healthy planet, but the interwoven systems of atmosphere, oceans, rivers, land, and ice that form our natural environment, are under great stress. Human activity is definitely linked to severe weather events. Scientists report how human use of fossil fuels has contributed to the gradual warming of the climate, giving increased energy to storms.

It is easy to come up with plausible doomsday scenarios.

The shift that has been a part of my thinking recently is that I am no longer thinking of climate crisis as something in the future. The crisis is presently upon us. I lived in South Dakota for 25 years of my life. I know that the state is full of people who have conservative political views. I know that there is no shortage of climate change deniers in the state. But the storms that swept across the state on Thursday and the storms that will continue to come don’t make any distinctions as to political views. Their effects are equally shared by all. It doesn’t matter whether or not you think the weather is affected by human activity when the wind takes out the trees in your neighborhood, rips off the roof of your school, or throws a chunk of wood through the windshield of your car. A victim is a victim regardless of their ideas or views.

Having grown up with so many stories of the great depression, I have been conditioned to think of hard times as something that was faced by other people in other places in other times. It is almost as if those folks aren’t quite real, even thought I heard their stories first hand. They had survived and the times had changed. Now, however, it is impossible for me to believe that all of the hard times are behind us. The stories that marked the lives of my forebears may be very similar to the stories that will mark the lives of my grandchildren.

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We haven’t seen the end of the severe weather. Hard times lie ahead for many people in the world. Preparing for disaster is simply prudent behavior these days. Unlike the days of the great depression when stories reached the newspapers days and weeks after the events, we are able to receive live reports from the midst of the storm. May we receive the news as warning rather than entertainment and realize that we are not immune to the effects of severe weather.

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