Men working near an overturned house after the Great Storm.
Men working near an overturned house after the Great Storm.
© 1900 Henry H. Morris. Courtesy of the Rosenberg Library Galveston, Texas. All rights reserved. This image has been cropped.
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Princen, Thomas. “Weathered History: Galveston and Extreme Events.” Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review, no. 3 (May 2023).
What, then, is the significance of these three extreme events in a region I call “Galveston”? What do these events reveal about the past and signal about the future, a future shifting away from fossil fuels and experiencing declining availability of natural resources and waste sinks? “Galveston” is my shorthand for a spatial area in Texas in the United States, currently marked by industrialism and expansionism, and a temporal period that I expect, in the far future, will be seen as ephemeral. Geographically, Galveston begins with Galveston Island at the intersection of land and sea and spreads northward and upstream through Galveston Bay and its freshwater tributaries across the low-lying coastal plain, now dominated by the city of Houston. (From the article)
This article was originally published in Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review. The journal is an online publication featuring peer-reviewed articles, creative nonfiction, and artistic contributions that showcase the work of the Rachel Carson Center and its community across the world.
2023 Thomas Princen
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