Eye on the Sky

With Hurricane Florence churning her way toward the coast of the Carolinas and the projections showing her influence reaching as far as our mountains, yesterday was a good day to make some preparations.

We are safe from actual flooding up here on our mountainside but power outages, falling trees, mudslides, and wind damage are all possibilities toward the end of the week.

John has laid in supplies of diesel fuel for the tractor, and dog food, chicken food, and birdseed. The vehicles are filled with gas, and he's deepened the water breaks on our road to send the water into the branches rather than straight down the road, taking all the gravel with it.

I made my usual weekly grocery run -- we stay pretty well stocked up on food and other supplies but I tried to anticipate what might be necessary if the power's out and/or the roads are .  Fresh fruit and salad stuff, mainly. The pantry is full as are the two freezers in the basement. We don't have a whole house generator but we have a gas range, a gas grill, a wood cookstove, and multiple kerosene lamps. 

The pump for the well won't function if we have a power outage so I've filled two five gallon coolers of water for drinking and cooking. We can always get water from the branch for bathing and flushing.

If the power goes later in the week, we'll be fine. But I won't be posting. Or checking Facebook. Or reading my Kindle.

Fortunately, we have plenty of books.

Be safe, all of you in Florence's path!

And Also Much Cattle . . .

In the Book of Jonah, that grumpy prophet asks the Lord to smite Nineveh for its sins and the Lord replies: And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

I've always loved the sheer goofiness of those last four words.  Who knew God cared so much about cattle?  And the reference to so many who know not their right hand from their left makes me think of the many climate change deniers in our country and, even worse, in our government. The Lord may have mercy on such as they but hurricanes won't.

I don't go along with those who see hurricanes as God's wrath descending on the unworthy (even if I felt a small shameful twinge of glee at the thought of Mar-a-Lago being impacted.) Hurricanes aren't surgical strikes against the unjust; they hit the just as well.  (Though it's the poor who will suffer disproportionately. The wealthy developers who pave over paradise, who build condos where wetlands were, who support a government that doesn't regulate -- those folks will write off their losses and move on to do more damage elsewhere.)

Hurricanes like Harvey and Irma are wholesale destroyers, attacking climate change deniers, environmentalists, scientists, those who know not their left hand from their right, and also many cattle -- not to mention all manner of pets and farm animals and wildlife. 

                                                       

These are natural disasters with knowable causes. And scientists agree that man's activities have contributed to the strength and frequency and destructiveness of these storms . 

It's time to acknowledge the new reality -- rising temperatures leading to more drought and forest fires, not to mention more "500 year hurricanes."  It's time to take steps to deal with this new reality, rather than sweeping the mess out of sight (that's gonna be a big job) and praying it won't happen again.

 It's time to get rid of officials who mandate no mention of climate change and rising sea levels, who ignore the adverse effects of fracking. It's time to rethink government aid for rebuilding in flood prone areas. It's time to realize that barrier islands aren't good places to build and wasting tax dollars on 're-nourishing' beaches is a fool's game. It's time to realize that wetlands serve a purpose and draining them to put up condos simply contributes to more flooding in the future. I could go on . . .

But briefly, it's time to pay attention to what the weather (or the Lord) is telling us. 

We don't have to worry about flooding up here on our mountain but we are anticipating the possibility of some high winds, lots of rain, and power outages. So we're looking to our supplies and John and the tractor will be digging out the water breaks.

 Meanwhile, be safe out there, all of you. And your cattle.

I didn't intend to rant. This was going to be a pictures only day and I'd just snapped pictures of some of the cattle. Then, once I'd posted the pictures, the quote from Jonah came to mind so I stuck it in. Then the idea of God destroying a city (or not) made me think of our current situation of fire and flood and hurricane . . . and it went from there. . .