...Rhett is sick today so he is in my bed right now playing the DS with his brother laying right beside him. They sound like they are having a wonderful time. Maybe that means he is not feeling too bad...
Today I hope to take down the rest of my Christmas decorations. (Those wonderfully framed Merry Christmas greetings in other languages? Still in their frames. I just forgot about those and noticed this morning they were still there.)
I hope to finish Thank You cards from the boys' birthdays and Christmas. One great thing about their birthdays so close to Christmas is that I can combine the thank yous into one. In fact I love that! And soon, when Rhett and Noah start doing their own Thank You cards, they will love it as well. Next year, I promise myself.
I have read two books this past week under a common theme: Hurricanes. Why I chose that I am not sure but I picked up two books about hurricane disasters at the library. The first book I read was about the hurricane of 1935 which hit the Florida Keys. This is the storm that killed more than 250 World War I veterans and also helped contribute to Hemingway's suicide many years later. I had no idea about any of it! The book is Hemingway's Hurricane: The Great Florida Keys Storm of 1935 by Phil Scott.
I also read Joshua Clark's memoir Heart Like Water which is about his days during and after Hurricane Katrina. He was one of the few that decided to stay in New Orleans. Four weeks without electricity, three weeks without fresh water (he finally found out you could tap into your hot water heater) and one broken relationship later, he finally tells of the reason he thinks the flooding happened. Want to know? The American Wetlands are disappearing. Because of river levees, completed after the Great Flood of 1927 (another great subject to read about), there is no river sediment to reach and replenish the wetlands as it once did from natural flooding. Because of the disappearing wetlands (over 2000 square miles of Louisiana's coast has eroded since 1928) the hurricanes do not diminish in size or power. (He says every three miles of wetlands knock the storm surge down one foot, reducing the hurricane's power to destroy by the time it reaches New Orleans). Ironically, Katrina became such a disaster because the river levees held for so long before the hurricane. Anywho, if you want to know more about this go to www.AmericasWetlands.com.
This week, I'll be reading about the collapse fo the honey bee or CCD (colony collapse disorder). Really, I am not kidding. :) This may also fall under a common theme with the other books. Man-made disasters: How many things can we mess up, kill off or make worse?
Bye for now.
1 comment:
I remember reading a National Geographic story about New Orleans, about a year before Katrina, which more or less predicted the disaster. The article was pretty pessimistic about the possibility of NO surviving into the next century.
I didn't know about Hemingway's hurricane -- I may have to check that out.
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