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because weather is so variable. But the natural world was changing, and fast. The arguments I’d heard, that drought and extreme population pressure were the underlying cause of the violence in Africa and the Middle East, were convincing. The number of refugees was mounting around the globe. And now we had internal American refugees as well, as the droughts worsened out west.
    In the pileup waiting to cross the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan, I wondered just how much carbon emissions these American roads accounted for. If we all just stopped driving and turned off the streetlights, how many days would it take for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to start going down instead of up? I sighed, and decided ‘all of them’ probably weren’t enough. If somehow the entire U.S. stopped producing greenhouse gases for a year, from everything from roads to power plants to agriculture, it might still not be enough. We were big, but we weren’t the only ones.
    I could only do one person’s worth. At least I was willing to do that.
    -oOo-
    The weekend wasn’t a total loss. I’d started a backyard vegetable garden the week I moved into my house. But the front and side still featured boring lawn and shrubbery, with a few token annual flowers to brighten up the place. Compared to the vibrant, lush green woods and salt marshes of Connecticut, that unloved lawn was an environmental dead zone.
    I spent Sunday and Monday digging and building and planting in earnest. The lawn soil was garbage, so I mostly built raised beds on top of it, though some crops would fare well enough in the clay-like loam. I wouldn’t really have cared how much the garden cost, or how much work it would be to take care of it all. But with food prices soaring, my little ‘victory garden’ probably paid for itself the first year. And it isn’t like I had a man or pets or kids to smother with my love and attention. Just my career and work friends. Gardening every day was my antidote to the corporate thing, that daily descent into sterile cubicle land, hemmed in, shut away from the sky.
    I loved my work. I really did. I just didn’t like being cut off from the natural world like I was. Especially not when it was in trouble, with the climate shifting.
    I didn’t see Hogan again. I assume he was released the next day. But I made no effort to keep in touch with Weather Vane. In fact, I unsubscribed from their mailing list and then deleted the email account. Like my travel phone, that email address was a burner.
    I did feel a twinge of remorse. I could have checked up on him. Hogan was kind of cute. But no, a wild-eyed agitator? A bit young, too. He wouldn’t have fit in my life. Best to just forget him.
    I kept a weather eye on my credit report. When the arrest check showed up, I wrote to the credit bureaus promptly to have it removed. I’d never been to Philadelphia that weekend. It never happened. UNC’s Human Resources did indeed notice the police entry, and contacted me about it. But I showed them my dated letter asking the record be set straight. They were appeased. But that was months later.

Chapter 5
    Interesting fact: There were no official reports regarding Philadelphia. Videos were posted on social media showing violent clashes in the streets of the city, and large milling crowds in Fairmount Park. But the national news remained silent.
    “Popcorn seeds!” Mangal exclaimed with a grin, as I handed him my leftover packet. “That’s a fun crop to grow. You sure you don’t want to keep these for next year?”
    “Nope, I can spare them,” I assured him. “Who knows? Maybe I can spare you some of the popcorn, too. Planted like 50 of them in the front yard yesterday. I’ve got homegrown cabbage cole slaw today. You?” We were sharing lunches in his office the day after Memorial Day.
    “Korma paneer and rice,” he offered. Mangal’s wife Shanti is an excellent Indian cook. Knowing that I would eat half of anything Mangal brought for