April 3, 2025 ~~ I received this book for free when I was doing college apps four years ago as a required reading for a full-ride scholarship program for a college I ended up turning down. I finished the book several weeks ago and was suddenly struck with an intense climate anxiety I'd long forgotten about. Rush's storytelling abilities combines true accounts by those affected by worsening, intractable floods and her own personal experiences as an anthropologist. Very stark, immensely human.
Note: these passages are quotes from the aforementioned book that I liked. I do not claim ownership of any of the words in green. My opinions are reflected with black text.
So I take a bite, and the fruit's thick pulp runs down my chin, luxurious and strange. It is a taste I have never encountered before. And in that moment I think I know why he and the others do not leave. (41)
it is not that you can have gratitude for everything all the time but that there is always the possibility of gratitude; there is always something that you can tap into to feel your gratitude, no matter what. (44)
I once heard a poet read from a book she wrote after Katrina. She said-- in a voice I understood as God's voice, on the night the water arrived in the city-- this:
Cordgrass takes its name in part from its vast rhizomatic root system. The ancients knew that both the creeping rootstock and the blades of this plant could be woken into a strong rope. A knotted rope, to measure the distance between places...This is the derivation of its genus name, Spartina, "cord" in ancient Greek. Like its homonym, chord-- three notes played together in the braid of sound that makes a harmony--a cord derives its strength from its weave. (131)
Out at the edge of the marsh a white plastic bag is caught in the reeds. It flaps like the flag of willful surrender. (132)
Risk is a word with more than one definition. Merriam-Webster says that risk is a situation involving the possibility of injury...[and] peril" and also "the chance that an investment (such as a stock or commodity) will lose value." One definition is physical, the other fiscal, and lately I have been thinking that the difference between the two is a question of proximity. To be "at risk" means occupying the space of the threatened body, drawn close to danger. (149)
...those considered at risk are taught to fear or distrust each other, instead of those who stand to lose the most should the edifice of white male power crumble. (155)
I think about the places these birds pass through on their way here: of the disintegrating cypress swamps the rufous hummingbirds fly from; of the willow groves that Swainson's thrushes have long sought out in San Francisco's South Bay; of the drowning bayous the ospreys pause in before crossing the Gulf. The birds are all nomads, at home in movement. But what happens when points along their paths begin to disappear? What disorientation will settle upon all of us then? I'd like to think that we can become more and more ourselves through this vicissitude. That through our losses we will be made whole. (197)
When you learn a language you learn to see your way of life as one of many, your place on this earth as fragile and shifting as any other. (198)
I want to be alone with these beings near extinction, whose lives are doubly meaningful by our perverse design. (201)
[Referring to the Bay Area wetlands]: All it took was two centuries to transform what had once belonged to no one, and so to everyone, into a commodity-- to be bought and sold and farmed and stockpiled; to be made to produce more salt than any other place on the planet; to be turned into low-income housing and glittering tech campuses, into tens of dozens of wastewater treatment plants and planned communities with picket fences and golf courses and fake stone fountains. (219)
That night I dream that I am a refugee on an island. There aer many others like me, displaced and dispossessed, all sleeping on the floor of an empty teak mansion by the sea. One day a massive storm starts; blue black, it spins a set of twisters up from the water's frothing. A flock of birds, hundreds of thousands of them, papers the purple sky. When I see them fleeing, I know-- as I have known little else in this life-- that having somewhere to retreat to is the key to survival. I also know that I too need to leave. But where can I go? I grab my mother and father by the hand and we run through the building and out the other side. We run down the long arm of the dock and jump into the adjacent marsh...When the storm is on top of us we take a big gulp of air and dive under. Then I wake up. (234)
I am thinking that while Facebook purposefully, painstakingly lifted every single one of its new offices as protection from the first wave of future flooding, it didn't elevate much of the infrastructure the buildings depend upon. It didn't elevate the roadways of the storm pipes or the sewer system. When those flood, taxpayers will cover the expense. And when the salt marsh harvest mice living just east of the parking lot drown, few working at Facebook will know. Because what they do and who they are is not dependent upon the land where their company rests; if Facebook eventually relocates to higher ground, it will be exactly what it was before-- a social networking platform that connects users globally, while disconnecting them from the physical setting where their lives take place. I am thinking about how the ability to move and remain unchanged is a privilege not shared equally by everyone and everything currently residing along the water's edge. (245)
yeah this is why big social media sucks. Is there a fixed phrase for "Big Social Media" that sounds as totemic as "Big Pharma"? Because we certainly need one. Also, this was written before Facebook became Meta. What times.
From there I could see that there is no real difference separating once side of the plywood house from the other; all of it is home, at least until it isn't. (251)
By joining forces and moving away from risk these people became agents of change, not just flood victims or refugees. The buyout, surprisingly, brought them closer together. (255)
I used to think of testimonial storytelling as an opportunity to "give voice" to those communities long kept at arm's length from official climate change discourse. But other time that description came to ring untrue. I was not giving voice to coastal residents. They had voices: powerful, distinct, poetic voices. Instead I was giving them a microphone. (260)
I often refer to my work with the aim of "amplifying underrepresented voices." Should I redefine that aim?
"I don't go into my interviews with charts that illustrate how the earth is warming. I leave my discourse at the door and instead ask residents to tell me their flood stories." (264)