I’ve told myself I’d retire from the discussion of natural disasters here, because the scope is far beyond a modest cartoon blog. Hurricanes in particular became fodder here, you will recall, only because I happened to have had personal experience with Katrina. However, because of that experience, I have been struck by one thing: so many of the Caribbean islands and the Florida Keys are virtually denuded of leafy foliage in the wake of Irma. One might be tempted to think, “Well, at least that will grow back.” One could be forgiven for assuming palms and coastal live oaks are naturally adapted to a capricious environment and have an abnormally hardy capacity to rebound. Not necessarily. Many of the trees stripped by wind and by storm surge will never recover. They are dead. Not a good thing in the tropical sun.
79 responses to “Command and Control”
Video from Mexico City shows hundreds climbing into collapsed buildings when the shaking had barely stopped and moving debris with their bare hands to help people that they didn’t even know. As of tonight it is reported that there has been no looting so far. Allow me to point out the obvious. On the other side of that imaginary wall there are human beings. I started to say just like you and me, but I won’t insult them.
even more obvious
there are humans in all the populated places of Earth
kinda the definition
Jerry, yes, that was a very compassionate comment. They are indeed.
One has only to work with one of these people we are trying to keep out to learn how hardworking, intelligent and proud they are. My trainee became more proficient than any I had ever taught, faster, more precise and perfect in no time despite a language barrier of sorts.
Oh and I learned about her education and how proud she was that her child would receive one. You see, hers was spent from age three working the great dump in Mexico City with her mother and siblings, looking for scraps of food or other scraps to patch their hovel if they could not sell.
I have seen those dumps in Mexico City and Caracas, Venezuela with those trash pickers. I did not want to, the tour driver took us. It was a tourist “sight”.
Sometimes I am ashamed of us, we who have so much we negate the values of others.
New thread