After thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it — burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war — humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. Changing rainfall patterns are some of the earliest tremors of our warming globe, with wet places getting more deluges, dry ones seared in worsening droughts. Join the Pensacola MESS Hall for an engaging presentation to hear how rain’s history has much to tell us about coming together to live more ethically with water — and adapt to the stormy times ahead.

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Cynthia Barnett, an award-winning author, teaches environmental journalism at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications. She is the author of Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, a finalist for the National Book Award and PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing, and named a best book of 2015 by NPR’s Science Friday, the Boston Globe, the Miami Herald and others. Her new book, The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans, is a natural and cultural history of seashells and the animals that make them—revealing what they have to tell us about nature, our changing oceans, and ourselves.

Funding for this program was provided by Florida Humanities and sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture.

Light refreshments at 5:30pm, talk begins at 6:00pm. Registration is required; space is limited for this in-person event. There is no cost to attend. This program is a partnership between Florida Humanities and the Pensacola MESS Hall.