20110830.1501

My beloved wife and I are back in Brooklyn, two days later than we had intended, but in fine shape.  Our apartment is similarly in good shape.  While we were away, we did have water in the basement, and we are going to have to do a bit of work with a bleach solution, but it will go quickly and should pose no problem.

We are very lucky or blessed, as your belief system will have it, that nothing worse happened to our home.

As we flew in this morning, we saw some of the lingering high water from the recent storm.  And then, of course, blowhards jumped onto the thing as--and the quotes are scare quotes rather than indications of actual quotations--"a warning to the American people about the evils of government."

I remember Katrina.  Hell, I got my first publication because of that storm (it was a poem, in case you were wondering, and if you weren't, then too damned bad).  I recall that quite a bit of polemic was strewn about in that storm, too.  Except that the administration was different, and there wasn't quite so much of the "hurricanes are God's wrath for having too big a government" going on then.

Without minimizing the tragedy that has befallen many from Irene (because people did die and it is tragic that they did so), it was not the supermassive-end-of-the-freaking-world storm that many (including myself, I admit) feared it would be.  When it hit New York, it was a Cat. 1, a weakling as far as such things go.  At its worst, it was a Cat. 3, which is significant, but living memory recalls far stronger storms (Andrew comes to mind, as do a number of storms from 2005 and 2006).  If, as is asserted by some--and you know who you are--Irene was meant as a warning shot, it seems to be one less well-aimed and of a lower caliber than has gone before.  And that does not seem to me to be in keeping with a God increasingly angry with an overly bloated United States government.

And it does seem to me that it is overly arrogant for any flawed, mortal being to presume to speak on behalf of the Almighty--especially those who claim pious and devout Christianity.  After all, Jesus substantially abased Himself (John 13:5 provides an example, especially considering footwear and roads of the time).

But that could just be me.  Lord knows I have been wrong before.