Watching the World

Tropical Storm Monday afternoon, sitting here at my Beck side window, looking out as TS Fred lashes downtown St Andrews. Wind as I write, was north at 26 mph, now north 31 mph. A bit of surge is showing on the Bay just below 7H porch.

In the kitchen a week ago this morning, our electric range died with an enormous bang, the new one was delivered last Wednesday. Linda evidently disliked the refrigerator we had, so we replaced that, and the new fridge was delivered about nine o'clock this morning. Shifting refrigerated and frozen food around, Linda came across apple fritters, one each for late afternoon treat, mine with black coffee. 

As storm bands pass over, the rain is shifting downtown Beck Avenue back and forth between almost clear and almost blinding white; not much automobile traffic down there at the moment. The weather seems to accommodate my feelings of helplessness about people of Haiti suffering their latest earthquake, and in my "military mind" my grief about the people of Afghanistan coming back under the cruel, evil rule of the Taliban. My memory of them the last time they were in power is of reading and seeing a photo of a young mother kneeling to be shot in the head, being executed for having stolen a loaf of bread to feed her children. As I recall, they had something like one day a week set aside for public executions and everyone in the village was required to attend and witness.

We may think we are out of Afghanistan, like the Soviets finally gave up and left, but we have not experienced the last of them as a terrorist haven. 

What puzzles me, I don't know the Afghan civilization at all, but they must be reserved and cowed as a people, of timid and fearful character, to so willingly give up and let the Taliban roll back in and take over. One could say we wasted twenty years on them, but at least they had a generation of hope as we held the Taliban at bay. 

A water shortage in Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico? Water diversion destroying bountiful Apalachicola Bay. Wildfires around the world. Unprecedented heat, climate warming changing the weather. Worldwide pandemic that feeds and changes itself, mutates to get around our control efforts. What have we done? What do we need next? Incoming, a twenty-mile wide meteorite hurtling toward earth at lightning speed. One has to fight off the feeling that we have angered the gods.

Clear downtown now. My weather map looks like Fred's "eye" has passed or is now passing over, with little or nothing else to come. Wind back down to North 26 mph and dropping.