"A (Near) Miss Is Good…"

richwrapper

Aug 29

(10"20 a.m. August 29, 2023)

By J Kirk Richards

The "I" J(e)rricane turns to its west a bit as it scrapes by Cuba and heads into the potent brew of bathtub-hot Gulf of Mexico allegedly aimed past Central Florida - The Mouse Factory seems scheduled for Unscathed as is muchly Orlando and my town just some few hands-full of fathoms northward, Sanford. There's supposed to e a full day before at Category 3 a major milestone points at Florida's Big Bend where it should come ashore in full fury.

But all t hat is conjecture drawn by National Weather Service and Hurricane center computer-generated maps. Breath not easy Central Florida. Maps are not storms, and both well may change. One reason all last century (almost) these tropical cyclones were given girls - OK, Ladies' More OK, Women's - names is the base canard that like the distaff set, such storms are capricious, whimsical wrathful windy wielders whose storm surges and attendant handmaidens - tornadoes - again located amongst the so-called fairer six - are only in the past few decades seen as the major threats to life and property, though some may suggest it's the soaking floods and torn vegetation which provide the rebirths such tired lands crave and whose beaches and shoals though sundered by rain, wind and wave are reconstituted much like a forest fire devastates for a time but brings forth renewal and rebirth in seemingly endless cycles.

Endless, seemingly - as far as humanity climbing out of its metaphorical or mystical cave to plug into satellites and feather-light and lightning fast fiber-optics (but we still have yet to match the precision and sharpness of a circular core of flaked flint, translucently thin and micron-sharp to say "match this, pure-science-maven: we were doing skull-surgery to relieve killing over-pressure and not just high up in the Andes mountains ages ago as testified in mummies' surgical head-holes and our-science proofs of recovery when Asians quit sailing to South America and Europeans still were wedded to shore-following leaky galleons. What we now know - or perhaps just suspect - is that like the stories in our mutual religious tracts not much on this mudball has changed eon after eon. Our new marvels are old-hat to the dead desiccated remains in the name of science we rip from their tombs in order to study from whence we came - and in the meantime new highrise casinos and resorts stretch Babel-like skyward to celebrate our inhumanity humanity.

And someone else may feel the brunt of "Hurricane I" instead of us. Do you adore oysters from Apalachicola or Cedar Key and Apalachee? Our taking a miss from "I" may mean buckets of succulent bivalves - don't even look to gulf shrimps or crabs because all that coming death may feed the treasured crustaceans even they will take extra time to reach plate-worthy size after the ocean beds have been scoured. As with all things natural, death brings life and life demands death.

We shall watch this storm "I" with wonder and awe, much as I suspect our very elders drew away from Florida's coasts each summer to spend their days under canopies of oaks and other trees so when winds blow and rains wash the accompanying bigger winds we now call tornadoes waft over the domes, and only come winter do we again venture back to the beaches to eat our fill of nature's bounty.

Only, now we migrate on concrete corridors and at a moment not a month we are at our beachside or lakeside homes watching with but faint interest as insurance companies flee their fiscal responsibilities in lieu of massive payouts to rebuild what next summer' storm season well may wrench from the privileged and hike our own "best bet" dice-throw called Act-of-God.

Sam Clemens once wrote - and declined to publish until he was well dead - in The War Prayer a truth as only a dead man, he said, can only say: "what your pray for you crops' rain well may mean drought and death for your neighbors," *I paraphrase - go read Mark Twain's sober and somber words and see; it's not just about war but all things humanly else as well.

So eat your mustard sandwiches Sanford and remember....September, October and November all await...and no guarantees the next few months after those, too, well may wield storms of significance we have learned to call Nor'Easters (and more).