November 4, 2012
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Your Opinions – Please Offer Them
Hello Xanga Friends,
I wish that one time I would be well enough to go to an area which needs disaster relief, for every person who I have known who has become a part of it has come back with reports which were overwhelming as to how two facets, those who need and those who help come together, and even three months from now, especially with all that has gone in to New Yoirk City and with the governors and the President working as national politicians should work, then people are going to find that they have, indeed, braved the storm, and on barrier islands outside of NY, they will even see the first tiniest buds of forsythia trying to break through, and no matter what pain and sorrow is in the past or behind, especially with those of abiding faith and a joyful soul — They will know that normal just isn’t but neither is despair. Despair is, to me, depression without a modicum of hope and the inability to function even over the course of the things which one needs each day.
I do have a hard time seeing how despair is a deadly sin until I remember that people will often change from a humane and loving citizen in to a monster, as if demons brew inside the misfortune of loss and pain. It is one reason that we should not take for granted the neighbor who just looks as if they need an extra hug, a cup of tea, and a moment to be loved — even some what as a mother should love a child. Give people your heart, and despair will fade. It will take a quarter of a century to see either New York or New Orleans in what people think is normal, for the new normal has to include giving up on some things. We have built on the areas which were our flood protection, and loathe the day when a Hurricaine 3 or 4 hits the outer banks of the Carolinas dead on. We took our eldest children there over 20 years, and we went back a few years ago to find that the area I kept bragging to everyone about, the open side with scattered beach homes which would or will take the first plunge in a head on hurricaine was no longer our wonderful summer place, and from Kitty Hawk through Nags Head and beyond was so built up that you had to get out driving along the National sea shore, and even then you could not watch the waves for the dunes.
I would have a hard time feeling great sorrow for the loss of those kinds of buildings; Life is another thing, but may this be a second sign, a third sign if we think about erosion along the hills of California over which multi-million dollar mansions keep sliping off of cliffs, but what will make us just cut it out. Stop building where villages are not meant to be, and the answer of, “We always come back,” comforts many, but the question of, “Should we?” That is daunting
It is a leap to think of the barrier Islands as sand on loan for summer places, but once people knew they were no place to live. With every horrible thing which happened in New York, it could have been so much worse, and worse will come. There are places near the oceans, islands where ancient man came in the summer, and where modern man felt that they could control those barriers with engineering. In God’s name, we simply cannot control the oceans and seas to that extent, and it is not that we are just seeing more trauma, loss of life, loss of property, and that word, despair. We have witnessed it with open eyes. The nuclear power disaster in Japan could not have come at a better time for everywhere except for all that was lost from the Japanese earthquake shouted to us; Nuclear power is deadly.
We human beings may not like the idea of not living with natures most beautiful and enchanting waters just outside our door, or having to replace every inefficient light bulb, and the new Christmas lights – They are just still and do not seem to have the twincle and glow of when we were younger; But we can be inconvenienced. We have seen tornado patterns change in my years of being a child beneath The Appalachians sourthernmost mountains where I was born, because we are seeing more tornados on Sand Mountain, and we are seeing more tornadoes in the Nashville and Murfreesboro corrodors, and you can believe it is all by chance..
The earth, the sun, and the stars, and the very atmosphere around us have stories to tell from the bottom of the sea to deepest space, and no matter who we are; It is on loan, and its cycles change as do ours.. Again, I repeat from a pastor who spoke when a storm had come through Kansas city about twenty five years ago, and her words were, “God is not this miserable time, this great storm, and our pain and anguish today; No, God is the great calm which will come after.” Storms just are, and we all want to live in the grandest of places.
I look out over San Francisco tonight, lights twinkle as the sweet wind eases by, and all is so clear that we can see all of the way to the Bay — Cranes, carriers on the water – some small craft. It is all so well that we think not once or twice about the fact our homes are moving toward Alaska every year. We are on plates of the earth, and we do not mind that our houses creep a little, but when the great roar comes, and the buildings are shaken like dead varmits caught by the most fierce of beast; Then we will too be waiting for the great calm, and all of the belongings will mean nothing in this area of absurd wealth.
We cannot protect ourselves from this earth; its weather, the wind, rain, snows, and cycles of sand or snow as such the eye cannot see; But it is time to stop the madness of building back on where man was just not mean to reside, but when it was to be left for natures cycles to transpire, and the knowledge; Some would always get to enjoy places in the summer, close them one late summer’s day, and let the secrets of land and sea only matter so much to the birds who hung around even when the snow said”You are a foolish one.., “
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