Japan, Libya, Wisconsin

Well, I’m back, not that I’ve been anywhere. I’ve been busy with other writings, with getting a virus out of my computer (don’t know how I lost the anti-virus protection), getting my papers ready for my tax consultant, and trying to keep up with the horrendous disasters in Japan, with one eye still on Libya. My heart breaks for the people of Japan. It’s hard to imagine losing family members in less than a half-minute of time, either to earthquake or to tsunami, and in the process, losing everything else, accompanied by the real threat of nuclear disaster. I can’t get this out of my mind.

I heard one news reporter in Tokyo say the tall buildings left standing were built to move on their bases during an earthquake. That reminded me of a bit of writing I had just completed in which I refer to the first earthquake-proof hotel in Japan, the design of Frank Lloyd Wright, architect of architects. Perhaps there are several of such hotels there now. In research for my paper, I learned a concrete base is not earthquake-proof, but a wood base can be, constructed in a specific way, of course.

We keep hearing, people in California aren’t saying any longer, “if” it has a really big earthquake, but “when.” I have several family members living in southern California, nine at least of the Rinards and the Justices (Lindsley side of family). One can survive an earthquake, but how many of us have a food supply ready for shortages such as Japan is going through now? I had the good fortune this week to receive a letter from one of my sons telling me he had ordered a supply of freeze-dried foods for me for difficult times if they show up here. How positively thoughtful a gift.

Those yearning for freedom in Libya seem to be losing the fight. We should have helped. How I long for America to be American again. I read in my grandson’s blog he was to visit with some of his friends from Libya last week, I think it was, or perhaps this week, in Las Vegas of all places. It will be interesting to read his report on that. He was the one, with his wife and little son, who got home from Libya early on, for they were already at Malta. But they left much behind in their apartment in Tripoli, which they believe to be lost now.

Such are only a few tragedies currently in the world, but I have no sympathy for the teachers and legislators who deserted their posts in Wisconsin. I was glad to hear about a thousand teachers are being fired for turning in false sick notes, apparently aided by some medical doctors. I don’t know if that latter part proved true, or if some agitators were merely posing as doctors. All that uproar is so ridiculous when one gives just one minute to comparing it with the real suffering in the world. ”Hurrah!” for Governor Scott Walker, may his tribe increase. [The last clause in that sentence is from a poem I had to memorize in junior high school.]

♥