September 13, 2017

Now that Mother Nature has taken us to school, and reminded us once more how puny we are in comparison, the hard work of rebuilding can, in the case of Texas continue and, in the case of Florida and the Caribbean, begin.

I sat in front of my television, as I am sure many of you did, a silent, praying witness to the destruction that hurricane Irma wrought on the Caribbean and the state of Florida. I couldn’t even imagine going through such a thing. As I watched I was inevitably reminded how lucky I am to live here, where I do. Rare indeed are hurricanes in my neck of the woods. I had to look it up. I knew of one—Hurricane Hazel that hit this area in the year I was born—but I wondered if there were any others.

The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 found it’s way as an extratropical storm to this area. In researching it, I discovered it did affect my own town, and that during the storm, the town’s flour mill caught fire, causing $350,000 dollars damage to the mill and 50 other stores and offices in town. I’m not sure what the modern-day equivalent to that amount of year 1900 dollars is, but for those times, it was a massive loss. But nothing, of course, compared to the number of lives that monster storm claimed: between 6 and 12 thousand souls perished. It was and remains the deadliest natural disaster in U. S. history.

Reading about that storm, that arrived in an age when they didn’t have the advance warning systems we have now, sent a shiver down my spine. In the account I perused, it stated that storm ended Galveston’s “golden age”, that in its aftermath, investors turned their backs on that city, and focused on Houston, instead.

Looking over the video footage of the last few days, of some of the Caribbean islands—St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Barbuda as well as St. Martin/St. Maarten—one wonders not only how these islands can be re-built, but if they will be. The loss to these small paradises was not just lives and buildings: a lot of the vegetation has been scrubbed away. Man can rebuild a house; but he cannot recreate the lush flora of the region. Only nature can do that, and that will definitely take time.

I try very hard not to be political in my comments. I’m not being so, now, exactly. But something happened in the days leading up to the landfall of Irma, and I really have to say something about it because, quite frankly it really got me angry. One of the more bombastic of radio personalities, one who is in West Palm beach, shot his mouth off before the arrival of the storm. While the hard-working Republican Governor of Florida was entreating his citizens to not ignore the warnings, to evacuate ahead of the event, this jerk with a microphone claimed to his audience that the hoopla over Irma was a left-wing conspiracy, perpetrated by those with a “climate change” agenda.

I am all for free speech. I may not agree with what you have to say but I will defend your right to say it.

That stated, I believe making such a statement, under the circumstances, should be equated to yelling “fire!” in a packed theater. Many people believe every word this jerk says; it is therefore my hope that if any of his listeners, heeding his words, came to serious harm or died, he should be held responsible.

And you’d think, that, having given that “opinion” from his lofty on-air platform that he would have stayed in West Palm Beach, knowing there was only a little breeze coming his way, not the monster storm cited by the Governor and everyone else. Right? Ah, no. The cowardly lyin’ evacuated. I wonder if he headed west, to, say, Marco Island or perhaps Naples?

Sorry. That was a bit barbed, but nothing angers me more than those who make money by spewing trash, regardless of the side of the political spectrum they’re on. I’m old fashioned and naïve.

I believe if you have a platform, then you should use it to uplift, not tear down.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury