Climate Books

One of the books that was in my exhibit at the Livingston Parish library in Louisiana last year was a little book I titled, "Climate Change: A Moving Tale." In it, I contrasted the difference in climate between the Northwestern U. S. and Louisiana, since I found it to be such a physical shock moving from one to the other.

I revisited this format again. Since once again, we've made a major climactic move, I came up with "Climate Change II" to show the differences between Louisiana and Nebraska.

I used data from the National Weather Service website to show average temperature highs and lows, and I came up with an average daylength for each month using data from the U. S. Naval Observatory website. Each little book has one city on one side of the paper, and the other city on the opposite.

October in Nebraska is beautiful. I was surprised to see that we are getting almost an extra hour of daylight each day, when compared to Louisiana. I expected the temperatures to be vastly different, and they are... there is almost a 15 degree difference in average daily highs for this month.

The form of these books is the same as the Thanksgiving book I showed on this blog last year. It is still one of my favorites, and is made from a single sheet of paper. It tumbles around when opened, and represents the unsettled, turbulent feeling of moving a great distance.

Poetry notebook visitors

This is one of the hazards of keeping a poetry notebook in an artist's sketchbook, I suppose.

I think I just can't resist picking up a paintbrush. Even when I am writing, I still see things in a concrete way. The wooly bear caterpillar I saw the other day inspired this flight of fancy.

I won't show the whole page because the poem is not going well. This is the only pretty thing on the page, flying and crawling under a pile of scratchouts.

Maybe that's really why it's there.