Food for Thought
As millions of delighted kids (and their parents) know, the town of chewandswallow is an ordinary place except for one (not so) tiny detail — its weather:
Chewandswallow’s weather came three times a day, at breakfast, lunch and dinner. But it never rained rain and it never snowed snow and it never blew just wind. It rained things like soup and juice. It snowed things like mashed potatoes. And sometimes the wind blew in storms of hamburgers. Life for the townspeople was delicious until the weather took a turn for the worse. The food got larger and larger and so did the portions. Chewandswallow was plagued by damaging floods and storms of huge food. The town was a mess and the pople feared for their lives. Something had to be done, and in a hurry.
–“Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs“; Judi Barrett (1978)
Is chewandswallow a global warming parable?
Witnessing the destruction wrought by tornadoes across a broad swath of the country this Spring, it’s hard not to at least entertain that thought.
Too Much of a Good Thing
Storms and the sustenance they bring (water) are a good thing — up to a point.
But as the earth warms up and storms become more frequent and violent, they bring damage and death rather than life-sustaining precipitation.
The change in chewandswallow’s weather ultimately rendered it uninhabitable.
Hopefully, the residents of the real chewandswallow will avoid that fate.
