Welcome to my (shitty) New Year

Everyone else has been making predictions, so why shouldn't Wit's End??  Here goes, I've got THREE:

1.  I will be arrested for civil disobedience, if not at the Koch brothers Climate Zombie protest planned for January 31st inadvertently... then otherwise, deliberately, later in the year - time, place and event TBA!

Thanks (I think) to RPauli for this photoshop!

2.  By year's end, one of the only safe places remaining on earth to live - and the most valuable real estate - will be in Hang Son Doong, a newly discovered, deeply gorgeous cave in central Vietnam.

Part of a network of hundreds of retreats, it may be the largest complex in the world...big enough to enclose a block of skyscrapers in Manhattan...and fortuitously, it possesses its own river - plus, where light peaks in from above, a thriving jungle!

3.  Events like these:  inexplicable mass bird and fish dieoffs, will become commonplace (although several astute comments have suggested that the government is never going to let the true explanation become public)

oh,...and in addition to a crushing and pathetic shortage of the most delicious delectables, from salmon to oysters to pecans that has already commenced, more will follow - including a devastating and intolerable avocado shortage which I sort of suspected, based on the bruised and puny condition of fruit in the stores - and then of course there is new research confirming the incredibly fast die-off of bees, the population of which has dropped a terminal 96% in the US in the last few decades!  Even though Albert Einstein probably didn't opine that "when the bees go, so does everything else"...it's still true.

 Why do I make such dire predictions of sudden collapse?  Because I think, 2011 will be the year of inflection.  Four important (if somewhat fanciful!) harbingers:

 1.  Christian fundamentalists have, after much scholarly study of their infallible bible, identified May 21, 2011 as the date of the Rapture and Day of Judgement,

when the end of the world begins...which just happens to be the very day, believe it or not, that we have chosen to be first daughter's wedding.

She was a bit nonplussed when I mentioned it to her, but I have since explained that, since our completely irreligious family will actually be in a (Unitarian Universalist) real church that day (for the first time ever)

we will no doubt be among those chosen to survive - so it's Perfect!

...at least, we will all be together rather than scattered across the continent when transportation and communication crash to an abrupt and - for most of the unprepared - unexpected halt. 

2.  it's really true - ethanol makes worse ozone.  This spectacular corroboration (thanks, Sherlock!)  links to research by Mark Jacobson which had already been included on the Basic Premise page...

but that explanation is much more lucid than I possibly could have managed, and adds invaluable expert commentary and observation.  

3.  This ancient Roman statue, from a bathhouse dating 1,700 years ago was suddenly revealed,  by a "massive storm."  How's that change for ya?

It's unfortunate that she's headless, but her toes are exquisitely carved.

4.  I personally had a dream.  A revelatory horror that I fully expect to manifest in reality, probably before I die.

This pine tree snapped and fell over in the recent blizzard.

It was quite large.  All the trees around it exhibit thinning and discoloration.  They will tumble to the ground, very soon, as well.

The rest of these pictures were taken in the parking lot of a huge auto dealership in Flemington, NJ.

Every single tree exhibits what I call BALDing syndrome - Bark Atrophy Lichen Decline.

The bark is peeling, splitting, fractured, ruptured, discolored, and oozing.

What follows are pictures of the planted trees - and the wild woods beyond the complex - intermingled with the recollection of my dream.

It began when I was in the center of the main building at Raritan Valley Community College (probably because I recently took pictures there, posted here.)

Or - I don't know, maybe it's even deeper, because I did take art classes there, years ago, and although I loved it, I dropped out when I got pregnant with youngest daughter (toxic paints), which was a life -changing event but never mind that...

Anyway, there I was in the building, when a wind started to blow.

It was whistling and grew faster and stronger and louder,

eventually, people started to notice it, and they clustered around the windows

watching it howl with tremendous ferocity

and then it got so wild and so savage

that people became frightened and began wailing

It was so violent and unrelenting, with increasing intensity, that the trees were shuddering

their branches were cracking, and the splitting trunks from torquing reverberations was an ear-splitting power that made everyone insane...weeping and begging - and it continued to intensify, unrelenting...the assembled survivors approximated the depravity of a Bruegel painting.

Sometimes I think that we should abandon all other attempts to educate, legislate, and demonstrate and instead turn to art.  Anything else is quite hopeless.  This last picture is of the village tree, which was draped with lights.  It is tragically bare of needles.  I wonder if anyone noticed.

What horrifies me more than anything, are the stories of the depravity where humans debase each other in the most despicable methods, for instance, this BBC story of refugees seeking refuge from starvation, and being tortured, raped, and buried in sand by human smugglers...for amusement!

And stories along these lines, of horrific attacks on a journalist seeking to tell the world about ruthless shark massacres, and then subjected to life-threatening retaliation.