After Childhood Trauma

 First, this may be triggering for some of you. Feel free to skip it.

Many years ago, and after a lot of support group sessions, I decided I needed a therapist. I began to be aware something was buried.  Not enough to be simply forgotten, the way you might forget the name and face of a long ago casual friend. The after-effects had always haunted me, something too scary, too shameful, too totally awful to ever talk about. I'd tried once, and gotten dismissed, and part of me grabbed onto that dismissal as a reason that whatever it was, it never happened. 

It just didn't erase it. So I went to a therapist who didn't dismiss me. She also didn't try to fill in my blanks, push me in any particular direction. But there was a room involved where that something happened. Her only advice was to talk to my parents, describe that room, and see if they could place it anywhere I'd lived. 

They did. There was also the - now somewhat understandable - betrayal of their denial anything ever happened there. They needed to know, in a later conversation, that I wasn't accusing them of any responsibility. I wasn't. They had already told me who else was there, somebody even then long dead. There'd be no confrontation, adult to adult, however healing that might seem to be.  But healing did begin. Somewhere in that early discovery timeline, the poem below got written, back in 1984.

I am posting it now because the memories came up again in another discussion of rape on another forum, along with a comment on how the brain protects us from "knowing" things that hurt us deeply. I recognized my own childhood. It was time to go dig out that poem again and read what I'd written. In the process, now having all the pieces, I recognized one thing else: my memory of that room was always from the vantage point of being on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, with a shadowy "HIM" at the end of it doing things I couldn't see, didn't know how to describe. But I always recalled, even in my recurring dreams, the pain.

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The Room

There is a room I cannot enter.
My memory lets me walk
All through that house
But there.
For me
Even its door does not exist.
What happened there I think I know.
Child Within was there
And from the darkened prison
Where she hides
She haunts my dreams
And private moments.
For years I did not know the room was gone.
I’d had no need to enter.
Now others tell me I have need,
Tell me what I’ll find.
I am afraid.
Memory paces up and down that hallway
But the wall stays blank.
Imagination wills a door
Designs a room
Builds a window
Slopes a ceiling
But I’m left pacing in the hallway
And still the wall is blank
And still I am afraid.
I claim I do not need the room
Or “someday” I will enter.
And I struggle with the pieces of my life.
I juggle one piece, then another
Build new competencies, skills,
And hide, even from me,
The blackened core within.
I know it’s there now, waiting,
And the hiding isn’t working very well,
And soon, though I am still afraid,
I’ll be back pacing in that hall,
Not in that room,
Not free to go.
Child Within, forgive me:
I’m not ready yet to help us both
Be whole.
There is a room I cannot enter
And I think my biggest fear
Is that when I walk in
I’ll find it empty
And I will know
That all the  awfulness
Is only -
Has always been -
From inside me.

Losing That Word

Has it happened to you yet?  It will be a very specific word you need.You can practically see yourself reaching back into your brain almost to it, almost see it taking shape for you, laughing at you with it's hints of the letters it starts with. But it's just not quite there. It's like a wall sits there, slightly translucent so you know what you need is behind it, but giving no clues exactly what it is. 

If left on your own to search it out, you start perhaps with talking around it, circling it carefully. It's almost this other word, but that's totally not it. It's something like this word over here, yet not that either. It kind of means this, and sort of means that, but those aren't sufficient, not the needed word. That precise word still isn't there.

If you're around helpful people, they might offer to fill in your blank. This? That? Did you mean...? They mean well. Often they derail your search.

If you are around polite people, they very well might wait for you to come up with it, leaving you the dignity of actually finding it. And if you still can't, right then, they will refrain from noticing your failure, allowing conversation to resume slowly to where is was going before you tried to find that word.

If you're a bit obsessive, you'll keep hunting, pulling yourself out of the conversation for a bit until either you find your word and chime in again, or give up for the moment and catch up to where conversation went without you. Friends will welcome  you back, happy for whatever you may contribute. You'll find that word later. You're relentless.

It will pop back. Sometimes it's because somebody else helped. Sometimes it's because you looked up similar words and it hid there in with them, describing them, defining them. 

Sometimes it just pops into your head, usually when you actually believe your brain has been busy elsewhere. The brain keeps its mysteries secret. When that elsewhere was sleep, that word will wake you up with a need to tell somebody exactly what it was! Pity them their sleep.

Occasionally somebody else gave you that word in the first place, and you can ask them "Who was...?" or "What did you call....?" When they easily supply it, you will suddenly recognize the word, possibly remembering it for three or four seconds until it escapes again unless you've written it down.

You have to realize that precision is important. Lots of words are "almosts", but almost doesn't do the job. Words are you. They are what you mean, who you are, how you say what you say, write what you write. Your words do not mumble through life. They are a matter of pride, of creativity, of identity. You are blessed by their numbers, the vastness of vocabulary. You play with them, work with them, sleep among them, breathe them in with every breath. They keep you company in silence, support you through hubbub, defend you in anger, soothe you so you can soothe others with them. They are the treasure you have collected throughout your life, which no thief can steal from you.

But then you lose that word.

Your Comforter Is Breathing

It can be essential for a pair of sedentary seniors to keep some form of lap blanket handy near their favorite chairs. That, or dress for outdoors, or worse, kick up the thermostat into the range of unpleasant bills each month for half the year, or more when one considers that three of those months where more heat is undesirable in Arizona are actually spent in Minnesota, in the home of a son who keeps the house there cool enough to be our winter heat setting. He's comfortable after all, and it's his AC bill.

Steve's preference is for a large blue comforter, by now a bit lumpy for use on his bed, but perfectly adequate for a lap robe. A little shifting and any bare spot can be moved to the side and a fuller, warmer spot slid into place.

My preference is for a very soft, fuzzy little blanket, the kind where the synthetic fibers are positively silky to the fingertips, and everything, since it's new-ish, is the same snuggly thickness and has the same insulating power in every square inch. It's the latest improvement in polar fleece. I haven't washed it yet because I fear that silkiness will be spoiled in the machines. But fear not, the white spots are still reasonably white, and much of the black shakes out and settles on the rug or along the baseboards in various rooms in little "bunnies." (Dog hair wasn't really dirt, right?)

Wonderful as they are, both comforter and blanket come with a bonus. Or maybe it's a liability, depending on circumstances. I refer to the family dog, who is always seeking heat with her short fur with no undercoat, part of what makes our little rescue-huahua perfect for southwest desert life. Since the house is geared to humans and our budgets, she is continually seeking heat. She will wait till we are settled into our respective chair, reaching for our respective blanket, and do her best to make her timing coincide with being there just before the blanket settles over both of us with her as the filling in the heat sandwich.

Most of the time that is absolutely lovely, with her giving as much heat as she receives, except when I'm wearing shorts and her nails find a spot of skin instead of fabric, or even despite Steve wearing sweatpants they land on an extra tender spot that girls don't exactly know about well enough to stop us being tempted into smothered laughter. Hey, I only said "tempted". Most of us aren't really that cruel. Honest.

She really does have her own super soft blanket inside her kennel. She actually likes it there, heading in when laps are busy with books or laptops, and finds her own blanket worthy of 5 minutes rearranging before she settles down. That lasts just long enough for her to figure out she buried her wee nose a bit too well and suddenly we can see it poking out between a couple layers of blanket about an inch into fresh air. None of this getting wild about fresh cold air enough to poke it out any further however. And while the inside of her kennel is mostly black, just like she is, and her blanket is mostly white, like more and more of her is, that little schnoz is the right blend of both to show at a glance. The entertainment in all that is watching her fight her way out of her own blanket by dragging it far enough over the rug that friction anchors it and she emerges fully. This means I get to push it back inside for her next time. The undisciplined way it goes back in is a big part of the extra entertainment of watching her lump and bump and fight with her blanket until it is just so the next time she snuggles inside it. I did fold it up neatly once, but she rewarded me by putting her own touch on how it sprawled and curled and folded inside the kennel. So I don't do that any more.

Seeing that nose is important. We need to know where she is before we start moving around. Certain person's joints are stiff, balance can be a bit off, and  there is always a need to avoid stepping on a small adorable critter who just may have chosen a different blanket than the last one she was seen in while, say, somebody was napping or distracted by the TV or laptop or whatever. Many times a certain blue comforter is over on the couch, but that's because I didn't wish to trip over it myself, much less have Steve doing it. The big lumps can be foot snaggers. Even worse if those big lumps are occupied by a heat-seeking pooch. But all too often the lumps of blanket or comforter are right where last set down.

There are occasional adjustments to those locations not caused by ourselves. This presents the real problem. So before becoming excessively mobile, we have learned to scour the room for the dog. She will be there. She doesn't abandon her people by more than a few feet, even though we don't necessarily afford her the same courtesy. So the hunt begins. Kennel? Nope. My blanket? Uh-uh. Couch? Easy elimination when it's just that white fabric. The logical alternative is Steve's comforter, a huge collection of lumps right under where his lift chair would bring his footrest down and squeeze shut. That is the other consideration here, that she could not only get stepped on or tripped over, but caught in the chair. 

This morning I had eliminated all the alternatives, but still saw no motion from the comforter. This needed studying. I can usually see a doggy lump moving, not a lot, just enough to offer proof of life. I waited, and waited some more. Steve had held off in bringing his footrest down, much as he'd needed to get out of his chair for any of the several usual reasons.  I kept looking, questions starting to form in my mind. Did I see motion?  If so it was almost imperceptible. Was my need to see influencing what I actually saw? She's getting old but not that old. Patience... patience... THERE! 

Now I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I informed Steve, "Your comforter is breathing". While we made the necessary adjustments  for getting moving, we decided that just might become our next new "in" phrase. We expect lots of opportunity for using it.

Paperwork Reduction: Are You Shitting Me?

After  making some more progress with my taxes, I needed to report my Schedule C amount on the 1040. They asked for it to go on a line which wasn't actually there. After rereading the instructions several times, then perusing the 1040 to see if that number had somehow skipped over onto the back side (it hadn't, silly!) I took a beat, had breakfast, and started over. 

Oh. I see it now. It's not on the 1040, it's on the 1040 Schedule 1. 

That never existed when I was working.  It always went straight to the 1040. Well, besides going to the Schedule SE, which I'd already gone through. I don't owe anything there. So I thought I was in a good and reasonably perceptive state of mind when I went looking for the way to get the number from Schedule C onto the 1040 so I could finish up. Apparently I was incorrect.

It has been known to happen.

Back to the printer to print out both sides of a Schedule 1, two copies total. Always keep one for yourself. It can be the one you scribble out numbers on and replace them with the correct stuff, so long as the final result is right. In other words, the worksheet. Once all the craziness is over, only the good numbers go on the forms you send in, so you can pretend you did it all correctly from the beginning. It's an ego thing.

But back to the new extra form part. It says, once you punch in the link to that form, that it is a result of the Paperwork Reduction Act. (Dum-da-da-dummmm! Hear those self-congratulatory horns blowing their fanfare?) It's two sides of about a bazillion ways one can have extra income one needs to report, including the Schedule C which used to be reported straight to the 1040. I had none of the extra forms of reportable income needing to go on the Schedule 1. For example, imagine my surprise to find out that Olympic athletes, theoretically amateurs, have sport income needing to be declared. After looking over the complete form, front and back, I put one number, the income from Schedule C, on one line in Schedule 1, and from there onto a line only for it  on the 1040. It didn't affect any of the other information on those whole two pages of Schedule 1. Nothing on Schedule 1 affected it either.

Just that one number.

Just on that one line of the Schedule 1.

Then transferred unaltered onto the 1040.

It couldn't go direct? It needed two more pages in order to reduce paperwork?

Meanwhile I still need to go back to the Schedule C and figure out which wrong job description I need to put down for how I earned some money. And if that weren't sufficient frustration, I need to go through the Social Security worksheet to figure out how much of that is taxable. I went through it three times, each time balking at being required to subtract a number larger than the one it's coming out of, which my my math education makes it a negative number. Once achieved, I then later need to do something unlikely with that negative number against some other number. Does that give me a positive number again? Don't two negatives make a positive, or is that only in grammar?

Since I'm asking irreverent questions, is it conspiritorial-minded of me to  suggest that these form changes have been put in place by legislators paid by lobbyists whose sole goal is to create more job security for accountants  who prepare taxes because they alone have the secret handshake or something? And now with more IRS employees as well, to justify their positions?

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for jobs to keep people both useful and independent. I'm also appreciative that folks are starting to have to pay their actual taxes legally owed. But does the route getting there have to take it out on me? Have you seen how old I am? I'm at least three years older than last week. How is that fair? Are they trying to get me to quit collecting Social Security faster?

*     *     *     *

OK, brain has recovered, numbers crunched, all but a signature from my sleeping spouse and a couple stamps needed to keep me/us legal. I decided to refer to myself as a miscellaneous manufacturer by number code, with "hobby jewelry maker" in long form. I decided the club does the retailing part and no way in hell I want to claim those headaches. We voted in a volunteer treasurer for that. She's great. But that does raise one question. What do I call  myself next year after I've started to sell a few non-jewelry glass fusion/slumping items? Looks like I have 366 days to figure that out. Whatever I decide on, there'll be no taxes owed. I've been slowing  down on submitting things for sale this spring, ever since I earned myself a 1099.

I think I've earned a nap now.

Tax Time!

 It's been a bunch of years now since I retired and had to file taxes. I did it one year just because the rumor/news mill claimed one had to file to be sure you got your covid relief checks. But it was so much simpler then.

For one thing, I no longer had to fool with Schedules C and SE. I'm back fighting with C again, and this time I mean fighting. I sold enough jewelry last year to "earn" a 1099. It's not that I haven't decades of experiences with them. It's that it was in a different kind of job and the company I contracted with held annual meetings where tax stuff for our business was explained in great detail, from keeping receipts and mileage logs to everything you could and couldn't claim as a deduction. By the last few years I was driving, the mileage deduction was up so high that I practically owed nothing. But it was simple. Really.

Now, not so much. First, no help with the changes except a dragged out struggle with the instructions. What exactly does "_____" mean to them? Does it mean this thing or that other thing? My biggest challenge of that type right now is picking a category for my kind of self employment. I make jewelry. There isn't something exactly like than in manufacturing. It gets sold at a retail level, on commission. But is it misleading to let the IRS think I run a store? The club runs the store. Everything is there on consignment. I can't find a matching category or concept to latch onto. Somehow I have to decide which wrong category is the least wrong. Even art categories are more performance art than manufacturing art.

Then there's the idea of maintaining an inventory. No way that works in the usual way. I do this as a hobby, for the joy of it. Much of what I make I give away as presents. There are a lot of things lying around waiting for use by being transformed from, say, a length of wire, into a chain for wearing or or sale. So far as I am concerned, all that stuff never even makes it into my inventory until it sells. All the rest is fun stuff. Not business. I don't depreciate things, stockpile things, they just wait for my fancy to fall on them again for whatever reason. Copper and sterling is still copper and sterling many years hence, and if untouched, is still just as ready to be used as ever.

Yes, I keep all my receipts. But what part of them goes into what I make for sale? The only time that comes into play is when they are finished and I put a price on them. How to do that was a big question my first few times, but I was given a formula I've followed ever since. We buy wholesale from the club supply room. For those items, double the price paid. If silver, say, was bought by weight, then the finished product (if it is only silver) gets weighed, priced, and that doubled. If there is a very large amount of work in something, more can be added, especially if you have no intention of actually making a sale by overvaluing yourself. You've already gotten the pleasure of doing it, the activity of keeping hands busy, the stimulus of creativity. For stones, or beads, etc, they get charged double my cost. Occasionally I forget weighing the metal separately in some combined finished product, but there is a simple solution. There is always another bead or nearly identical stone around, just because there always is. Weigh that, take that weight off to get the cost of the metal, and go from there. Price it at whole dollar amounts. like $18 instead of $17.50, and no ridiculous 99 cents in there.We are old folk, and pricing gets the KISS method for the store. Too many customers can't add other than even dollar amounts while they plan how much they can spend. We've been around long enough to not be fooled into thinking a penny off means anything except more numbers to try to remember. It's not an actual discount.

With that method of pricing everything, my costs can always be figured out easily from my commissions. The club takes 20%.  Sales tax got charged and paid by the club but it's never a part of the 1099 info we see and not our headache. That means my 80% check amount first gets the missing 20% added back on to bring up my total charged price, then that is cut in half to get my costs, my original cost starting point. Take that off my total check and the missing 30% is actual profit.  It saves a lot of piddly bookkeeping. Just simple math at the end of the year, and only this last year was it needed. (I guess I should be proud this is progress?)

Do I fear an audit? Well, it depends on whether the IRS thinks my low jewelry income on top of modest Social Security and a bit of interest is worth their time. I have to crunch more numbers to even find out if I'll have to pay self employment tax. I know for sure the grand total falls below the taxable total income for this pair of old geezers filing jointly. By the time I figure in the cost of using the club facilities for my hobby, I might even fall under their minimum for Schedule SE. But yes, I keep ALL my receipts. They fill a grocery store shopping bag. Got into that habit many years ago. It's one of the reasons I love to shop with plastic. Do they want to fight through them and try to pick my brain for whether and how much of any particular one contributed to a particular sale?  Or whether it's still lying around in miscellaneous boxes and totes and bags ready to get put to use? Were those particular beads practically free from somebody's garage sale years ago? When I bought that organizer that came with beads in each compartment, all for the price of the organizer, and kept maybe half of them to use someday, does that inspire the need to dig through an audit? 

The only thing I see raising an eyebrow will be all the zeros in all the irrelevant boxes on the forms. Like I said, nothing enters my inventory until it goes to be sold. There are no car expenses. No office expenses - the club supplies everything. No depreciation of tools and manufacturing equipment because - you guessed it - the club deals with those. No energy costs because - again - the club picks it up, and what they don't, the Rec Centers organization does for the facility itself. I can't use either until I pay both sets of fees, easily recorded costs to deduct, especially since this is my only club so it all goes there. (Do I count that as membership fees, or have to loop it all into building overhead costs since that's what it covers, along with training and all the other headaches a "real" retail business deals with?) There's no actual labor cost because we're all obligated to a certain number of hours of volunteer time in the club. Occasionally I buy my own small hand tools, but you might recall I'm the person who repurposed an old screwdriver (phillips) to wind wire around to make jump rings, and when I was done, it was "decommissioned" into a screwdriver again. I've put a turkey baster and pill bottles to similar use in shaping earring wires. I teach my skills to others for free, just like I was taught and still am.

But I've spent enough time kvetching about taxes instead of working on them. It's time for bed so my math brain can wake up ready to deal with some of this fun again. Good thing tax deadline day isn't the 15th any more.

A Visit To The Doc

There was one big thing notable about this visit.  On the surface it was ordinary,  just a review of my lab results and checking if my meds are still the right ones. There was one change, going from one that had greatly increased in price to an identical one much cheaper. No health implications aside from the budget's. There were a couple referrals written up, more people to see before we head north. Nothing unusual, nothing worrying.

However, in my experience, this is still the only clinic to still require masks of all people on the premises. People walk in unmasked and look surprised that an actual medical facility requires precautions against a virus which is still killing so many of us, just no longer making headlines. One of the two boxes of surgical masks on the counter where patients sign in is pointed at when bare faces are present. No mask, no appointment. No fooling.

Frankly, it's a relief. I'm getting one test postponed over 4 months because that clinic is backed up from covid: staff shortages. They didn't explain whether it was illness in their personnel, deaths in personnel, or flat-out burnout. But I noted while in that office I was the only person wearing a mask.

Cognitive dissonance, much?

I just hope when it's my turn for my procedure, they exercise better judgment than that. In all ways.

"Every RuleThat We Almost Have"

Everybody's heard about the Tennessee legislature last week by now. Everybody in the world with modern communication. In the midst of a protest asking them to finally, FINALLY, enact some common sense gun legislation that might stop the next school shooting after three students were killed in a Christian school along with three adult staff.  In another couple weeks that incident will get lost in the abundance of mass shootings in this country, and people are more and more standing up against the unrestricted possession of guns, both in quantity and quality, also known as the ability to kill the most people in the fastest time just because somebody has some kind of perceived grudge.

Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, both black, along with Gloria Johnson, white, joined in the protest. First it was from the floor in regular debate until the chair cut their mikes. When they returned wth bullhorns to continue making their points without their microphones, the two men were expelled by the super-majority of Republicans, which exists thanks to extreme gerrymandering. They did not expel the white woman because "reasons". They made excuses, but we all know what those reasons were. The two were "uppity blacks" while she was white.

One of the (white of course) Republican legislators, Cameron Sexton, went on camera to spread some "truth" in defense of the expulsions. He unknowingly spread some real truth when, on camera and widely broadcast now, he explained it as being because the two "broke every rule we almost have."

We can guess with little imagination what those rules they "almost have" might be: 

Don't be a Democrat. 

Don't be black. 

Don't be uppity, especially if you're black, though by definition any black man who speaks up no matter how just the cause, is "uppity". 

When the Republican super-majority doesn't like your speech (because you're black, because they're likely paid off by the NRA and gun manufacturers and action threatens their livelihoods) they have no need to listen to your opposing point of view. 

They are allowed to cut your mike off because they can.

It's just not allowed for you to find a way to continue to be heard.  

Any time a Republican White legislator breaks a rule it can be ignored or perhaps a minor scolding may ensue, wink wink nudge nudge, pat on the back and a handshake of eternal loyalty. 

Should the Democratic "uppity black man" dare to be uppity, kick them out and teach them all a lesson.

There are probably other rules they "almost have" but which simply haven't come to light yet, or at least not so publicly. We'll start by seeing how they treat the two Justins when they are returned to the legislature by their constituents. I expect there will be more eyes on the body in the near future, at least.

Perhaps they should "almost" have another rule in that legislature, borrowed from Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Oh wait: I think they've got that one down pat.

Spring In The Desert

It's taken so long this year. We've been cold. Lots of rain though, so when opportunity presented, stuff bloomed. Having Steph down to get me out and about after so long was just the nudge I needed to go see it. 

And shoot it, of course. 

She did too, only with her cell. One of her goals in coming down was to be able to send pictures back to northern friends still stuck with snow cover showing them a place with flowers everywhere. The cactus weren't blooming yet, though they've started now. She did see a few on her last day. But those first travels were full of bushy yellow daisies, or so she called them after some internet searching, orange penstemons,  and some blue roadside rows and rows of what look like skinny lupines along with purple bushy spikes of... who knows? There were some red flowering bushes as well, and ocotillas just starting to attract hummingbirds. Desert poppies were scattered around in most places, though on our final day of touring we passed numerous roadside slopes covered with them.

Just like it's always the fish that got away that sticks in your memory, it's the shot that got away that resides in my memory. I was driving, and on the freeway with no possible way to slow down, much less pull over because the only shoulder was straight down. Climbing the other side of the valley were huge patches of poppies, broken up crazy-quilt style with equally huge patches of the blue flowers lining the roads everywhere. Saguaro and other green bits broke them up in places, but it was mostly the yellow/orange and blue. Maybe some day I'll be the passenger heading south on the 17 down into The Valley and can roll down my window and capture a dozen shots. Or maybe it requires another wet early spring, though I wouldn't ask California to repeat what it's been going through to grant us this blessing from their weather leftovers. 

At least I think I wouldn't.

Here's what my blog would let me upload for this, just the desert poppies, individuals and part of a hillside. Anything else and it balked.

I guess for more pictures I'll have to make more posts.

Are You Ready For Climate Disaster?

 No, not in a hundred years. Not in 70 or 80. Much sooner. I'm willing to bet many of you haven't a clue how bad it is yet. One has to really dig to get the information from the scientists who are studying all the influences. The media is concentrating on TFG ("The Former Guy", not to be encouraged by acknowledging him by name despite the hopefulness of his araignment and arrest) to the point of covering his plane from Mara Lago to New York and motorcades on either end non-stop the last couple days, with refreshers today just in case anybody with usable electricity may have missed it, on top of nonstop coverage of the closed courtroom door. So they're not going to give the latest climate news many headlines.

But they are available from reliable sources. Not just the headlines, but the in depth explanations of how conclusions were reached, sometimes way over my head, sometimes explained for the ordinary non-science expert. If you think you can still deny this "extinction level event", start informing yourself and see if you still believe that.

You may think you're informed by paying attention to the weather anomalies in recent months. You may even remind yourself of the caveat that weather isn't climate. Perhaps right now it makes you feel better to do that. Fifty tornadoes in a day, repeated several days later, and coming much earlier in the season than usual, isn't climate. Record snowfall, melting and flooding rivers and eroding banks with the spectacle of our seeing homes destroyed, that isn't climate either. Nor are the expansions of droughts around the world, especially how easily one can discount them with any particular rainfall.

All that is true. But climate change is the runaway engine driving all of it. Climate changes are becoming more extreme in the direction of higher methane and CO2 in the atmosphere in amounts never measured on this planet before. They are producing changes in clouds. Never heard about that one, right? Those changes are reducing the depth of our atmosphere. Never heard that one either I bet. 

You have probably heard that glaciers are shrinking, even disappearing or soon about to be. "Soon" is nebulously defined of course. So you think you have decades left to act, to continue as normal. It's so easy to do when they are so far away that you may never have seen them. You will likely have heard that sea levels will rise when glaciers go away, and all sorts of people with a voice in the media will have poo-poohed the effect of that on sea levels. The ocean is so big, after all. You remind yourself that even the hugest of icebergs is still already 7/8ths under water, so how much effect can it have when it melts? It's easy to ignore how much on-land ice this planet has, thinking that it's not going anywhere fast. But huge ice shelves are collapsing, allowing glaciers to descend more swiftly. We are only now seeing how much their under-glacier rivers are carving them out from the bottom up.

Even more sinister than higher sea levels, the deep ocean currents are slowing down due to less cold water input. Those currents bring nutrients to feed the microscopic organisms at the bottom of the food chains. Without those, plankton dies, and without plankton, all that feed on it die, and so on all the way up. We are at the top of that food chain.

Glaciers melting ties in with permafrost thawing. Permafrost is a great carbon sink, and an even better methane sink, so long as it stays frozen. Now that it is thawing both of those greenhouse gasses are rising at unrelenting rates. Winters in either hemisphere are not refreezing at a level able to slow the process, much the less stop or reverse it. It is only speeding up.

You keep getting news about climate change these days that is nowhere near as grim as I'm talking about.  Scientists report threats against their careers if they tell the full truth. Petroleum industry moguls are doing all they can to hide the truth or at least minimize it. (Profit motive, anybody?) A recent study of air quality near rigs in the Gulf found CO2 levels twice as high as what the companies were reporting. Much of the science getting reported is not in details easily understood by non experts. The whole field needs its version of Carl Sagan to make it understandable to us lay folks. You think one could get the needed air time?

There are sources out there, people who collect the information, and do their best to distribute it in easy to comprehend yet comprehensive versions. They don't get picked up in the mainstream media, although some  there are starting to state climate change as a fact, finally. But the loud official voices are busy looking way out ahead, putting the tipping point into the next century. We respond by ignoring it pretty much. We don't see the need to change our consumption, slow our breeding, because we still believe it's wayyyyyyy out there. Too many experts are starting to tell us we've passed it.

I've been following this closely for months now. Mostly it's been on a website called "Daily KOS". It's prime focus is liberal politics. There are a lot of sub-groups with other interests like science advances, gardening, photography, etc. A couple specific members have been collecting climate news, and if you wish, you can go over there even without signing in and read what is posted. (You won't be able to comment or post your own content until you join.) Two I follow regularly are Pakalolo and Meteor Blades. Pakalolo in particular has posted so  much that the recent ones typically contain a bunch of links to other relevant posts. Cawfeemug is a frequent contributor to the discussions and posted a compilation on his own site with Medium. It is a great quick summary of most of the recent factual information - along with some personal reaction - and lots of links for those looking for more in depth information. I strongly recommend this as a starting place, both for you and for anybody you want to pass this along to:

https://gilbertweaversatchell.medium.com/urgent-warning-f2ae93919c86