today’s audio is… wet. when i started last episode with my friend jose and i singing our song “underwater” in the river outside my house, i had no idea what the next days would bring and what such an innocent song choice would foretell.
“virtual hurricanes” is a song that i wrote for my songwriting group in a quick hour on a thursday afternoon in late june. it’s not my best song. it’s not my worst song. i had fun with the rhyme scheme and the word play. another song in the song bucket, and we move on.
except… not so fast. my song about capricious weather events as a metaphor for a relationship now has a new resonance. since the last episode, my neighbors and i, and countless other new englanders, have endured three - yes three - huge storm events. called 100 year storms, we got them with roughly 100 hours in between.
so the water you hear rushing in the background this whole episode is my actual river, after these storms. after the usually sedentary, burbling, shallow delight turned into a destructive, raging channel, swollen 10 feet above level and scouring its way down our valley. it passed right under my porch, destroying houses, roads, and farms along the way.
i have lived in the same house for 18 years. it’s a great house, which is why i have stayed even though i don’t own it. the main part of the building is from the 1920s, if not earlier. and i’ve heard from neighbors that it was an ice house or a mill or a depot for the electric rail line that used to run from here to boston. the second half of the house was added later, maybe in the 60s. the whole place has a charming, frankenstein-ed feel. a little structure put together from spare parts, by need of its occupants as needs arose. however, its most salient feature is that it is right on the river. the house sits atop a tall stone wall set into the rocky bank. if something falls off my porch railing, it splashes down and is carried gently downstream.
as many of you know, my charming little spot has been part of my career for many years as the site of my series CABIN FEVER. it’s also been the perfect refuge to come home to after tours that involve cities, airplanes, customs, crowds, and long 18 hour days.
this photo is from 2009, when we did the river episode. in all the recent flood events, the water came up and over the high stone wall my friend trina (in blue shirt and white shorts) is standing on.
this peace was rocked for the first time in 2011, when hurricane irene socked the northeast. on that day, i woke up to the smell of the river. we’d had a lot of rain over many days, and when i went to bed the river was high, but it often quickly rises and falls. that morning, it stank - oil and gas and trees and satellite dishes (yes, satellite dishes) were speeding by in a disgusting toxic soup. in the 10 minutes it took for me to look at the river and decide i should leave, it rose a foot.
so that day, i did what i have come to call “triaging the house”, of which i will say more shortly. i quickly gathered what i could, threw some stuff in my car, and hightailed it over to a neighbor’s house on a big hill across town.
in my absence, the river rose up and surrounded my house. it swallowed up the old mill foundation in the yard, turning it into a muddy pool. it ran under porch. it ran up and around the bulkhead doors to my basement, filling it with about 4 feet of dirty, silty, toxic water and mud.
and yet an hour later, the river was back below its banks, humming along as if it hadn’t just destroyed anything in its path. i was relatively lucky that time. i lost my books from college, some CDs that were down there. the furnace was submerged but remarkably worked fine for the next 2 years. we pumped the water out and shoveled up the silt. i thought over and over again of new orleans. how much of a mess was caused by water having been in my basement for mere hours. and then for new orleans to have sat for weeks in the miasma.
over the years, the memory of that flood faded. sure the furnace rusting out was a reminder, as were the periodic blooms of mold in my studio, which is right above the basement. but i eventually got rid of my post-irene storage space and put my merchandise back in the basement, albeit feet off the floor and in plastic tubs.
hey yall - this seems like a good moment to pop in and drop a few announcements on you.
this fall i’ll be out on the road across the South with my good friend Welcome To Night Vale. i’ll need help at the merch table for all these shows. you show up a little early, help me before and after the show, and in exchange get two awesome seats to the performance. drop me a line erin@erinmckeown.com if you can join me. first come first served in each city.
now that summer is waning, this pod essay will be getting back to my first *and* third wednesday production schedule. what a great time to become a subscriber if you aren’t already. what a great time to tell a friend about the Fax Of Life. those small actions really help me out alot. thank you for listening, subscribing, and sharing!
fast forward to july 10 of this year. we’d had a lot of rain over many days, and when i went to bed the river was high. but at 3am carl started barking and could not be soothed. not by a walk, not by getting in my bed, not with cookies. he was 80lbs of agitation and edginess. he knew something was up long before i did. when we finally went downstairs for our morning walk, it was pouring. no big deal. we are new englanders. so we suited up and went for our usual romp.
however ,when i came home, soaked, the river looked different. suddenly it was a darker greenish brown color. it was rising quickly as i stood on my porch and watched. when whole trees with car-sized root systems turned up to the sky came rocketing by, i knew it was time to leave.
and thus, for the second time in my tenure here, i triaged the house. i hope you never have to do this, but if you do, here’s a handy guide:
1 - start with the basement. this is where the water will come first, if it isn’t already there. make a guess as to how high the water will be. if your guess is wrong, you do not win a prize. determine what you can afford and not afford to lose. in this case, i knew i could not afford to lose the books and vinyl i have stored down there. not the fun kind of books and vinyl you have in your living room, the kind that costs tens of thousands of dollars and represents many years of income.
2 - in the pouring rain, haul these large boxes up your narrow stairs and toss them through a window into the studio. dodge your dog who thinks this is a game.
3 - leave behind the thousands of CDs because no one buys them anymore.
4 - move on to the studio which is right above the basement and only a few feet off the ground. if the water reaches the studio, you’re fucked, so who cares about what you saved from the basement. in that case, what in the studio needs saving? for me that was several guitars, a keyboard or two, and my show suits - each of which represents many hours of internet creativity and tailoring and blah blah blah
5 - carry these items up the narrow stairs to the second floor loft and toss them on the bed, which provides an extra 2 feet of space should the water reach that high. should the water reach that high, you’re really fucked. dodge your dog who thinks this is a game.
6 - grab some clothes, your computer, your two most important guitars, your passport, some food for the dog, and the dog himself who by now knows this is not a game and is truly freaked out.
7 - leave and head to a neighbor’s house on high ground for who knows how long. don’t stop to say goodbye to your house. you don’t have time. whether it will be there when you get back or not is no longer up to you.
8 - do steps 1-7 in 20 minutes or as fast as you can
i don’t have to tell you readers, it sucks to have to do this. it sucks to have to make these decisions on your own. our town has an emergency alert system, and it did warn folks about the flood, but until the fire department comes knocking on your door (which they do do) you are in a gray area of choice. do you leave or do you stay? how bad could staying be? will your ancient house precariously propped on some wooden beams be swept away or not?
in comparison to irene, we ended up lucky. the house didn’t get swept away and there was only about 6” of water in the basement. the river just licked the top of the wall. many of my neighbors weren’t so lucky. when i returned that afternoon, i walked through my house with a tight stomach, relieved that everything was fine, but unable to fully relax. it’s hard to tell a body to stand-down once it is in battle-mode.
over the next few days, i slowly returned the house back to normal, except for putting the merch back in the basement. i’m not wise, just lazy.
and then, it happened again. just a week later, a second storm. this time the river didn’t rise so quickly or angrily, so i didn’t evacuate my still semi-triaged house. i just walked out on my porch every 10 minutes for hours, watching the river rise and fall and wondering if it was time to exit the gray area. only 2” of water in the basement this time, but still days of pumping and cleaning.
and then, yes friends, it happened a third time. a gorgeous friday suddenly turned into two separate, ferocious downpours. for most of my neighbors, this third storm was the worst. almost every road in my town washed out and had some sort of collapse. i was lucky again. only 2” of water in the basement, but still pumping and cleaning for days.
sadly, stories like mine are common here in new england. common and becoming more frequent. it is deeply unsettling and wake-up call of the most personal kind.
i am ashamed to say that i was one of those people who couldn’t bear to hear about climate change. i skipped the article, didn’t listen to the podcast, changed the channel. the grief and powerlessness of engaging with our changing planet overwhelmed me. my brain couldn’t compute, couldn’t hold the inevitability. i think alot of people feel this way, and it’s probably one of the contributors to how we arrived in the place we are at.
but these last few weeks, as the reality of climate change has immediately and immeasurably impacted my town and my nervous system, i have been reminded of a movie i saw when i was a teenager.
i grew up going to a science education camp in the blue ridge mountains of my home state of virginia. at night after we sang camp songs, we would have an evening program. often it was an expert of some sort of who would come and talk to us about some aspect of environmental science. other times it was camper or counselor talent night. but almost every session i was there throughout childhood, one night was a movie called “all the difference”.
we watched it on an actual reel to reel projector, the machine humming and clicking alongside the sound of crickets and frogs outside. images of beautiful american landscapes voiced-over with great american poets alternated with images of classic urban blight and environmental devastation voiced-over by a couple who complain about how they can’t breathe. how they can’t drink the water. how they dump their old car in the river. and how they wished that they had listened to people who had told them we had to change how we treated the earth.
the point was clear. you, the viewer, have a choice to make. here are two outcomes: a gruesome, toxic future brought on by your carelessness or picturesque vistas and classic verse.
only later, as an adult, was i able to find out more about this movie. it was made in 1970 by kodak (presumable to sell film?) and was voiced by the legendary comedy team of nichols and may. it is so of its time we never really took it seriously as kids. it seemed like an artifact rather than a warning.
but boy do i take it seriously now. i bet we all do. whether our houses have flooded three times in 2 weeks, or not. we didn’t listen to the poetry and take care of the earth. and now it’s probably too late.
x erin
ps - i know it’s a bummer to end an essay this way, but the Fax of Life are real Fax of real Life. happy wednesday, the apocalypse is nigh!!
pps - here is a cute picture of how carl deals with climate change
pump supervisor.
¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS!
the USWNT is playing for a 3rd straight world cup. and they put some cah-cah on the field in their draw with portugal. here’s a great pod that captures all the resulting #feelings.
my hometown AA team, the Fred Nats, have a gay announcer!!
i did the #barbenheimer and it was sublime-en-heimer. HIGHLY RECOMMEND. here is one of my favorite writers on it.
i love using AI to upend gender expectations, but only for that.
settle in for the classic martina/chrissy finals match at the 1985 french open
last month i included some poignant dog-content, which then begets more poignant dog-content. keep it coming.
sea-lions are tripping out on a neurotoxin and biting people.
re: today’s topic. what to do with climate grief.
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triaging the house