I wrote last September after flooding had badly affected us at The Larches that for many round the world it can be far worse, bringing loss of home, possessions, livelihood, even life.
At the time I hadn’t thought that we would be seeing natural disasters so soon – disasters that can be directly linked to climate change and flooding. In October however Hurricane Sandy prevented our return from America for four days and caused millions of dollars of damage on the US eastern seaboard.
Now this last week a report in The Guardian (May 16th) by Suzanne Goldenberg has shown dramatically how small communities in Alaska are being affected by warmer temperatures and the melting of the permafrost, which until now has provided a firm enough base for housing and other facilities.
Goldenberg’s three part report looks at Newtok on the west coast of Alaska and some 400 miles from Anchorage. As Spring approaches, the adjacent River Ninglick carries off huge chunks of land as its melt waters race towards the Bering Sea.
The nearest doctor and hospital is 100 miles away and by 2017 the US Army Corps of Engineers estimate that the highest point of the existing township, now 20 feet above the river, will be underwater.
Destruction of up to 180 indigenous communities in Alaska’s low lying areas, adjoining rivers and coastal areas, is almost certain. Yet US officials indicate that there will be no additional federal monies available to meet the costs of creating new settlements for these displaced people, which could cost in the case of Newtok up to $130 million.
Could the Newtok community become the first of “America’s Climate change refugees”? asks Goldenberg. An initial start in tackling the issues in Newtok has been made by identifying an area nearby where volcanic rock will provide a solid base for construction of housing and facilities.
But if the Newtok community is to survive intact, it will have to raise the money and do much of the building work itself – no mean task for a group of just 350 people.
I‘ve been asked by one of our blog followers where the information for our 
Interesting? Why yes, because this three word tweet has of today been re-tweeted a record 802,000 times! (See tweet and photo opposite) It’s an indicator of the extent to which the new social media has been used with such success by the Democratic campaign. Our UK blog followers know they first read these words a day earlier!
Wondering what the picture opposite is there for? Out of context, it may look rather insignificant. But some of our visitors may recognize this blown up fuzzy image of Causey Pike as the February page of the Larches 2012 Desk calendar, which we give to visitors and guests when they come here. 
The Silent Traveller was an instant success and had been reprinted three times by 1944; and since then has been re-published many times. It was to provide too a successful format for his further Silent Traveller books, covering Paris, London. Edinburgh, Oxford, New York, San Francisco and Boston. An early version of the Lonely Planet series!
We’ve been last week to the magnificent Ford Madox Brown exhibition at the City Art Gallery in Manchester. It has now closed. The first comprehensive showing of his work for 40 years, the exhibition vividly shows both Brown’s contribution to Victorian painting and the range of his work. 
He is best known perhaps for his painting Work, (opposite) created between 1852-1863 and based on a street scene in Hampstead in London where the road is being dug up by navvies, who are surrounded by a cast of Victorian city dwellers – flower sellers, drunks, bonneted young women, horse riders, porters as well as social reformer, Thomas Carlyle. 
This shows an unemployed navvy with his tools, accompanied by his nursing wife and exhausted son as they rest during their tramp through the country lanes in search of work.
My favourite painting in the exhibition is Brown’s The Last of England, painted between 1852-55 and now in the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery collection. It’s a moving and colourful picture of a husband and wife with their children. Windswept and staring ahead, they are seated on the deck of a ship. They have just set set sail for Australia, a foreign land, where they are looking to find work.