Glow of Emergency
by Gabriela Lena Frank
I overslept... I can’t even remember the last time I did that. Like a lot of partially deaf people, I’m sensitive to light and I’ve always woken with the sun even when I still need hours more of rest. Even if I'm in a vivid dream, there's no chance of light becoming part of the fantasy. But this morning, another smoky orange day has dawned, and the house is dark in the most unsettling muted glow of emergency. My dogs Maní and Huck are laying quietly but Gazpacho is rattled, a little hellion-puppy, trying to chew everything back to normalcy. It was his tail frisking my face that woke me, not a normal sunrise. In the middle of the day, I can expect that solar lights and car headlights will turn on and the crickets will chirp as if it's dusk on Mars. What is this world?
Oh yeah. Climate crisis. And California as the proverbial canary in the coal mine but with Oregon and Washington right behind us. I was so alarmed to read about a tiny WA town burning to the ground not far from my brother and his family. I adore them and worry that they haven’t spent years desperately preparing, mentally and action-wise, like my husband and I have.
But is anyone ever really prepared? If people find masks during a pandemic to be a huge political inconvenience, will they be willing to eat dramatically less meat, support taxes for creating public transportation while giving up their gas cars, and rarely fly? And so many other inconvenient and even more disruptive measures? In a way, COVID-19, itself a symptom of environmental distress, seems to be an awful dress rehearsal for our capacity for logic, human compassion, and interdependence. When will the amount of “death by ‘rona” be too much? When will the amount of fire — and floods, derechos, extreme winters, and bee die-offs affecting food production — be too much?
Gazpacho is slaying me with his cuteness, asleep and breathing into my neck; and I really need to get out of bed, put on my ears, and try to get some normal work done. (What is normal work, anymore?) I can smell that Jeremy’s put on coffee, using eco-beans, of course... Ha. We are also preparing for a visit today from our fire chief, a Latino local who inspires so much gratitude and confidence from this community, hyper-vigilant and nervous as we all are. He’s overseeing a free county chipper program where folks that have managed to cut down bush and branch can get the stuff reduced to chips that lie more safely on the ground rather than provide “ladder fuel.” Fire soars on ladder fuels, and knowing that, we have a small chipper but the county monster will be much more efficient.
And so it goes. Another dire day. Please, please... Be safe, everyone, and don’t think climate crisis won’t touch every corner of the planet. And for God's sake: Vote.
Gabriela Lena Frank is the director of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Included in the Washington Post's list of the 35 most significant women composers in history (August, 2017), Gabriela was born in Berkeley, California. Winner of a Latin Grammy, she has composed for leading orchestras and worked with luminaries like cellist Yo Yo Ma, soprano Dawn Upshaw, the King’s Singers, and the Kronos Quartet. She also is a passionate believer in service, and has brought her love of music into hospitals, schools, and prisons. Learn more on Gabriela's bio page.