And the Rains Came

by Sherman Yellen

This has been the wettest month of June in recent memory. Is it a coincidence that the word rain is a jumbled version of Iran where civilization has had a nervous breakdown? Is our climate having a breakdown as well? Climatologist's point to global warming as the cause of this rain, and my soggy mind has been occupied with building an ark – the kind Noah had constructed when faced by the great flood – only I’m building it inside my roiling brain. Now comes the big question With whom do we fill it?

You, of course, reader, are welcome aboard, but without your flat screen TV, gas guzzler van, exhausted cell-phone and whining children with ipods glued to their ears. Being human I would go for my own family first. Taking care of one’s own comes with the Good Book seal of approval. Noah didn’t leave his family out to surf the rising waves. Both my sons and their significant others, together with my grand-daughters, my good wife, the family Labrador Sam, and cats Byron and Kittay would make it aboard.

Of course I’d invite congenial friends, preferably ones with musical or story telling skills to while away the long hours in the darkness as we rocked and rolled in that raging sea. Plenty of biscuits and bonine aboard. My family doctor would be welcomed with her family. She’s kind and gorgeous and skilled and must be saved. The caring nurse who sees me through the ups and downs of my chronic illness will be among the invited along with various physicians who qualify as full human beings rather than MRI technicians. Cats allowed but no catscans. Janet Ritz, the brilliant environmentalist, would be there to give us some tips on how to survive it all. And we would need some folks who are skilled with aqua-agriculture and can mix up a self-restoring batch of salad greens to keep all of us fed. We would all be vegetarians. None of those two by two animals on board would be there for the slaughter. The trouble this modern Noah faces is that virtually every wild animal is now an endangered species, as is much of mankind, so rule number one is no eating the passengers. Continued...

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