The fact that you went to Chicago means you'II always have an orientation that is slightly different than the mainstream culture, slightly countercultural.
For example, rising sea levels mean that salt water is travelling up rivers, and that's trapping animals like frogs and salamanders, who... they have less space to live and that's why they're in danger.
Cleopatra was sailing up the River Cydnus in a barge, its sails purple, its rowers urging it in with silver oars to the sound of the flute blended with pipes and lute.
When we're mainly focused on striving and straining, because we're convinced that only through 'effort' we'll get where we need to be, we may be swimming against the stream.
When John Thornton froze his feet in the previous December his partners had made him comfortable and left him to get well, going on themselves up the river to get out a raft of saw-logs for Dawson.
We can swim upstream, trying to reach a place to rest with all our might, using all our efforts to fight the rushing water and still not get close to where we need to be.
The sea was very rough in the straits, full of eddies formed by the counter–currents, and the chopping waves broke her course, whilst it became very difficult to stand on deck.
The way it works is that the surrounding skeletal muscles compress the vein and propel blood forward, and the veins prevent blood from moving backwards by using one-way valves.