Bad Times

I haven't written much lately. I've been too busy with work and life. I recently took my three week vacation to points south to see family. While we were there, in the South, in the first weeks of August, we made a day trip to New Orleans, and another to Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, and on to Gulfport, all on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

We did not know that less than a month later - indeed, in the same month - all of these places would be pretty much obliterated by a hurricane. My very first blog was my "response" to events in Southeast Asia, last December: Shakeup.

I suppose the ideas that I outlined in that story are nonsense, technically speaking... but still, the fact remains that climate change is occurring, although the defenders of the conquest of nature and natural resources maintain that this bad weather of late is just a thing that is cyclical in nature and nothing to really worry about. After all, does one degree really matter?

I do not have the answer to that one. I do know that, as in Southeast Asia last year, there's likely to be thousands dead in the aftermath of this storm. And, this is nothing new - thousands died in 1900 in a storm in Texas, long before "Global Warming" became an issue. Things happen. Weather happens. All we can do is support the folks who are living it. The victims who were on "ground zero" as well as the troops who are being sent in to help with the cleanup effort. My brother is one of the latter. And a couple of aunts and an uncle by marriage are among the former.

We do not know if everyone that we know is "all right". From the stories I have heard, no one is going to be "all right" down there, for a long, long time. The lady who tells the story of being "rescued" by boat. And the rescuers having to prod away the floating bodies with a stick to get the boat through. It tore her up to see a tiny baby, floating, lifeless, yet looking so real and innocent. The baby looked perfectly peaceful, normal, fine - no sign of the tragedy which had befallen it. She says she wished she could have picked him up and breathed life back into him. She was a survivor, but likely she'll never again be the same person she was before. It shook me up just reading that story - I cannot imagine being in her shoes.

As for my extended family. All we can do is hope and pray that they will pull through. The aunts, at least, were supposed to have evacuated, although they have tons of relations who may or may not have. And my brother. I envy him not. As bad as living through the storm and later having to be shuttled away to someplace else was, he and his comrades will have to live with the violence and heat and mosquitoes and alligators - all of which will be nothing when compared to the horror of the identification and recovery of bodies, young and old, white and black.

If you believe in a God... or even if you don’t, please take a moment to say a prayer for both the victims and the heroes of this event.