It came to me in a brief daydream. Someday Highway 17 will be renamed "the current tea-garden swamp road to a flooded coastline", as written on the walls of the Los Gatos Main Street overpass. Consciously I went on from there. Highway 880 will be renamed "the 88 Keys to the Piano Concerto of Zero Oblivion", as written on the 280 underpass. And Highway 280 itself will be renamed, prophetically, as "the Highway of Diamonds with Nobody On It" after the dark visionary Bob-Dylan Prophetic song lyric, as written on the Highway 101 overpass. And Highway 101 will be renamed "101 Dalmations following 1001 fire trucks on a Highway Now Reserved for Them", as written on the iconic underpass in east San Jose crossing the start of Highway 680. And Highway 680 will be renamed for the warnings of our Zero Dark Destiny proclaimed in 1968 and in the sixties, as the Sounds of Silence flow from our once-crowded freeways, because the people bowed and prayed to the fossil fuel gods they made.

"Hello Darkness my old friend", Paul sang to the cold and damp. And the prophet Bob Dylan, who inspired Simon and Garfunkel, wrote of the "roar of a wave that could drown the whole world", as well as "10,000 whispering and nobody listening". The Hard Rain is indeed now falling, as we in San Jose endure the second Tuesday in a row of storms that bring down trees that destroy cars and homes and caused a power outage for me and hundreds of thousands of others and killed one man as he drove home from work in Portola Valley and 4 others in our area. The first-ever virtual hurricane off San Francisco came yesterday, a phenomenon I did not believe could happen here in the Bay Area. Meanwhile millions continue to die in poor countries for the convenience of 90 fossil fuel barons. Bob Dylan wrote of the song of a poet who died in the gutter. He said that he would go out before the hard rain started falling and share the warning, to where the homes in the valleys meet the damp dirty prisons, where the people are hungry and Zero is the number; it is all closely related. And that he would know his song well. We all need to know this song well. We need to know what is happening, and share the warning, and we all need to know what needs to be done. We must dare to disturb the sound of silence. The oceans are rising, and so are we.

As is true of many of us, I have been betrayed and wounded in my life, which is an obstacle and a cautionary note for my faith in humanity to handle all its rain. I remember though, that Bob Dylan inserted into his hard rain song, "I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow". When the sun returns amidst the rain, some hope might return too as we rise after this opening of this pandora’s box. There's some beautiful and inspiring connections to the sky and a higher reality.

Noted environmental scientist Katharine Hayhoe on climate change and the solution: talking about it

The Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan

Democracy Now reports on this situation

The Rainbow Bridge by Eric Meece