Holding my breath

Like much of the country, I’m holding my breath and praying for the people of Florida and the southeastern part of our country. Who knows what direction Irma will finally take? The maps with a hundred lines leave one confused, but the Caribbean took a hit and probably the Keys too. I think of the woman who curates the Hemingway house on Key West and stayed behind with all those cats. Last word was it undoubtedly was damaged. I know tomorrow I’ll keep the TV on, sometimes muted, to keep up with reports.

Such scary times, for those of us with the wits to be scared—fire and flood, storms and inevitable pestilence. The wildfires in our northwest have been overlooked, overshadowed by the hurricanes. But they too deliver unbelievable destruction. People lose their homes. I read today that authorities are recommending people bring their pets in at night and leave buckets of water for wild animals fleeing the fires They will be scared, hungry and thirsty.

An earthquake in Mexico, accompanied almost simultaneously by hurricane Katia. So much tragedy, so much loss of life and property. And, always, I worry about the animals, both domesticated and wild. Scary is way too mild a word for the western hemisphere these days. If you don’t believe in climate change, please go immediately to buy property in Key West.

Back in Texas, life is almost normal, though we can’t forget that many, too many people have lost their homes or are still unable to go back to them. Floodwaters of that magnitude recede slowly, leaving overwhelming destruction, and it will be a long time before Houston and the surrounding towns dry out. A friend wrote that family was going through the detritus of her home, searching for memorabilia, before the bulldozers struck—somehow the bulldozers stuck in my mind. I hadn’t thought of that.

Pray for our country, our hemisphere. Pray for the world. I sometimes feel that we in America have sent off a negative chain reaction. In truth, we are in part the architects of our own doom. We have ignored flood plains and drainage studies in our wild push to build—more business complexes, more housing developments, more shopping malls--the earth will adjust. No, it won’t. The earth doesn’t need concrete covering such large portions of its surfaces. It needs to breath. And now we have a president who willy-nilly tears down the protections for our earth, allowing pollution of our rivers and streams, rolling back building codes designed to erect structures resistant to destruction, ignoring EPA warnings and disbanding that unit of government, showing no respect for the earth that nurtures us. We cannot build pipelines across sacred native lands, and we cannot defile wetlands by drilling for oil. We must learn to respect the earth. Pray that it is not too late. Harvey, Irma, Jake, Katia—all are a wake-up call, albeit it a late and disastrous one. Who is listening?