A Long December (And Early January)
Plus, my contractor is still finding ways to be a giant asshole (but that's OK), and the humor in humans destroying the planet.
Early one morning in December, I woke up to my wife yelling to me from the living room.
"Jar! Can you come down here for a sec?”
Her voice was calm, but there was an edge to it, so I hurried downstairs only to find a growing puddle of water around the stairs and into the living room. Liz was desperately trying to cover the area with towels.
Not again, I thought.
It had rained all night, and my half-sleeping brain assumed the creek had flooded our home again.
“Maybe the sump pump isn’t working,” Liz said. “Let’s check it out.”
Our hapless, borderline incompetent contractor had created an access panel to the area under the stairs where the sump pump was positioned (hardcore readers will remember this panel as something I described as a portal to another dimension in a previous post), but had decided to seal the panel up with screws rather than making it into a door we could easily access in moments like this.
After we used our trusty Makita drill (thanks to RPR reader Christian R for the suggestion) to open up the access panel, we peered into the area under the stairs, bracing ourselves for a broken sump pump. What we got, however, was yet another example of our contractor’s incompetence.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Liz said. “It wasn’t even plugged in! He sealed up the access panel without even plugging in the fucking sump pump!”
“What an asshole,” I said in solidarity. But I gotta be honest, I was actually relieved to find out the water in our living room was simply the result of a contractor’s stupid mistake.
Within minutes, I went from thinking we were about to relive the traumatic flooding we’d endured a few years ago to believing I’d need to run to Lowe’s to pick up a new sump pump before the water started ruining furniture to learning our problem could be solved simply by plugging a cord into an outlet.
I hadn’t even drunk my first cup of coffee — normally the first very first thing I do every morning — and I’d experienced more emotional states than I do over the course of an average week.
From December through early January, we had three rainstorms that resulted in serious flooding in our area and caused the creek to rise to uncomfortably high levels. Initially, I viewed the winter months as a respite from my flooding fears. But as these storms have shown, you can’t let your guard down in the age of extreme weather. You can have a January day where an arctic blast sends temperatures plummeting down to the low teens followed by a balmy 60 degree one that brings with it more rain in hours than we used to get over the course of the month.
There is, however, one thing this year-round extreme weather is good for: killing complacency. When every other week seems to bring with it the chance of a record-breaking storm or formerly non-existent disaster (I’m looking at you Pennsylvania tornados), you learn to get comfortable being uncomfortable. As unsettling as this may seem at first, I do believe this hands-on lesson in uncertainty is ultimately a good thing. As much as we like to convince ourselves otherwise, we don’t have control over much in this life. The sooner we make our peace with this concept, the easier it is to live in the present and appreciate all the good around us.
Bilski’s Bits & Bullshit
Normally this little chunk is an eclectic mix, but I’ve read a lot of really compelling climate change content over the past month that’s worth sharing.
1. An eye-opening look at the U.S. disaster recovery system
Dr. Samantha Montano — the author of the excellent substack Disasterology — penned an eye-opening Opinion piece for The New York Times on the reality victims often face following natural disasters. The piece, which is heavy on photography, features interviews from 12 victims of a variety of natural disasters and paints a damning picture of formal disaster recovery systems.
In the article — titled “America’s Disaster Recovery System Is a Disaster” — Dr. Montano puts the problem like this:
The help Americans receive after disasters isn’t just inadequate, it’s complicated to navigate and painfully slow to arrive. From the amount of time it takes to complete recovery — measured in years, not months — to the labyrinth of policies, regulations, false promises and lawsuits, the reward for surviving a disaster is being forced into a system so cruel it constitutes a second disaster.
2. Can climate change be funny?
The comedian in me screams, “Hell yes, it can! Anything can be funny if the joke is done right.” Despite my fervent belief that the rapid human-caused warming of our planet and the subsequent disasters it spurs can, indeed, be hilarious in the right hands and under the right circumstances, I have yet to write anything remotely funny on the topic (and I’ve tried … a lot!). My friends over at Gen Dread posed examined this question in a recent post with “I Want a Better Catastrophe” Author Andrew Boyd, and it’s well worth checking out. Like me, Boyd also believes strongly in the role humor plays in the era of the climate change tipping point; unlike me, Boyd actually knows to make this bleak subject funny.
3. Proof It Can Be Funny ….
If you’re looking for proof that climate change is fertile ground for comedy, look no further McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, which offers an array of climate-themed short humor pieces like Andrew Singleton’s “I Don’t Care If It’s Ninety Degrees, It’s Fall and I’m Wearing A Damn Sweater” (a sentiment I unironically I agree with) and “Answering Questions At The Climate Summit After My Speech in Support of Oil World,” by Eli Grober.
4. The reality of parenting a child who goes viral
Finally, I think I’m contractually obligated to promote any writing I do outside of this newsletter and my day job here. To that end, I recently had an article published in The Washington Post titled “What happens after your kid unexpectedly goes viral.” Unlike most of the parenting articles I’ve written (and largely retired from doing), this piece was pitched to me, and I had a great time interviewing three parents — Ricki Weisberg, Aaron Gouveia and LaQuista Erinna — about their experiences following the viral videos their own children created.
As always, leave your questions, concerns or general feedback in the comments section (or in any post) or email me directly at jrdbilski@gmail. Consider sharing with others using either of buttons below my signature (or on any of the Share buttons sprinkled throughout). In an effort to grow my recommendations, I’m doing something kind of fun. The first person to recommend River People Rebuild will be featured in the next newsletter.
Now let’s end this thing right where it began, with a live clip of Counting Crows doing “A Long December” …
Til Next Time,
Jared
Jared Another great article...so glad you got the sump pump working....guess you won't be using that contractor anymore ...best wishes to you and your family ❤️