summer erupting

As we face another summer the likely threat of more wildfires erupting in warm dry areas of the country bodes badly. Those who witnessed their homes virtually ingested by raging flames as well as those waiting fearfully to learn if the firs will attack them, and those of us who have seen fires blazing in homes and buildings—all experience a participant observer’s trauma. TV and social media transmit and often amplify the sensation of trauma even from a long electronic transmitter distance. Traumas are piling on us: the war in the Ukraine, the ever-increasing mass shootings, the pending losses of rights to abortion and possibly gay marriage, the proliferating conspiracy theories spinning around us, the reports of institutional sexual abuse, the unending pandemic, climactic terror, and on-and-on—we begin to long for a calm, peaceful, temperate period.