Life Skills Stolen: A Lesson in Hurricanes

About an hour’s drive south over 50 inches of rain has been recorded.  Here, we had two inches, barely enough to moisten the parched topsoil, not enough to create even a small puddle for the ducks to romp through.  The creek remains low, the pond empty.

Of course Houston is no stranger to floods, or Galveston, or anywhere or anyone who has lived along the Gulf South for any short length of time.  While we lived there we were so fortunate as to experience two so-called “100 year hurricanes” in just three years — during Hurricane Katrina we were living in New Orleans, during Hurricane Ike we were living in Galveston.

I refused to live in the Gulf zone, anywhere, after that.  The folks that remain must really love it there, or be more resilient than I am, or have lives and jobs and loved ones they can’t bare to do without.  I respect their preferences and choices, but I chose that we should get the hell out.

Sometimes a woman has to put her foot down.  Or at least, compromise, with pleas and tears.  No my dear, we cannot move back to Spain, Hubby concluded, but we can move north of Hurricane Zone and south of Tornado Alley.

OK, it’s a deal!  I wonder, maybe more women should be making that sort of deal for the good of their sanity and pocketbooks?  I don’t want to give unsolicited advice, but if you choose to remain in the Gulf, it’s only logical and pragmatic and wise in every way that you are emotionally, financially, spiritually capable of living in dangerous regions.

I had long had a respect for self-reliance, having lived in Eastern Europe, where to be Šikovnyý (handy, skillful)  was taken to an art form.  They didn’t take their Skoda to the mechanic, if they couldn’t fix it, a neighbor could.  They cooked from scratch, they mended clothes, they had gardens and grew vegetables in them usually, not grass.  There was scarcely any packaging, the waste–I remember that as most impressionable of all–there was hardly any waste.

Of course that changed fast as soon as the Soviets left and the new Big Brother took over.  This was progress.  Goods filling the shelves, boxes and cans filling the garbage.  It was as fascinating to watch as it was hard to watch.

It’s amazing how fast life skills can be lost.  Or maybe I should say stolen, because that’s what I really think.  The skills that kept cultures thriving and self-reliant and community-driven are being stolen from right under our noses, and our parents’ and grand-parents’ and now even great grand-parents’ noses. For the U.S. at least, this goes way back.

Commodify everything, even the very air we breath and water we need to survive. You are not a good capitalist unless you are willing to drown cities at will in order to profit nicely and have the added benefit of restructuring at will.

See, what ends up happening in these recurrent disasters is those folks who are not self and/or community reliant, are not independent and are most often not the least bit Šikovnyý get in dire circumstances every few years and the government and their communities and extended family and distant friends and loads of complete strangers feel absolutely compelled to help them out.  Usually through agencies and funds that are syphoning and squandering these do-gooders’ money.  There is not only here what Dr. Phil would surely call “enabling” unhealthy lifestyles, but also in some cases, even a dose of pathological altruism.

I saw after Hurricane Katrina that actually what was happening in New Orleans was a land-grab.  I suspect the same and similar is happening with every weather event, and, to go even further, these events, weather and otherwise, are being manufactured.

If you find this preposterous, incredulous, impossible, you need only spend a few hours at these sites to uncover exactly how this is done and has been done for many decades.

Jim Lee’s Weather Modification History

Dane Wigington’s Geoengineering Watch

I know it sounds odd, but those two hurricanes were perfect impetuses for positive change in our lives.  Hubby never wanted to live in New Orleans.  I never wanted to live in Galveston.  We both fancied the idea of having chickens.

And chickens, being the gateway livestock, led to ducks and turkeys, pigs and sheep, goats and . . .

I no longer send money or volunteer, as I had long done, to anyone affected by a disaster through any organization, especially the government.  The weather modification programs, and therefore the weather chaos, is a problem they are creating, which they want the public to bare the brunt of on the front end through taxes and the back through disaster relief.  It’s a con.

Yes, folks suffer.  I get that and I am feeling for them and sending them prayers.  Mostly my prayers are saying, “If you can’t handle living in an area that is repeatedly a disaster zone, do like me, and put your foot down, and get the hell out of the Gulf for good.”

It’s just not worth it. It’s not going to get better.