Idle Musings

Wow! It's almost the end of July, two months into the Atlantic basin hurricane season, and there's only been two named storms and not even an actual hurricane yet! Now, I've been an avid hurricane tracker over the years, even when I wasn't living anywhere near the coast, and can't recall a year during that time quite like this. I could easily be mistaken, of course, since I haven't kept detailed records from year to year.

If I'm right, though, I wonder if there has been a recorded hurricane season with a start similar to this one. It would be interesting to know how that hurricane season turned out. I realize that hurricanes and, thus hurricane seasons, are fairly unpredictable. They tend to have a mind of their own, evidenced by the fact that I was 100% certain that Her Horribleness wasn't headed to Beaumont because the barometric pressure hovering over the area was too high. Fooled me! Still, I wouldn't mind learning to see if there's a similar hurricane season in history and what it looked like. I just don't have the time to dig through the record books to find out.

On a totally different note, my mind has been doing some rambling about things happening in the Middle East. Last night, I was finally reading last week's Newsweek and was reading the article, The Hand That Feeds the Fire, by Christopher Dickey, Kevin Peraino, and Babak Dehghanpisheh on Iran's influence in the situation when I came to this paragraph:

The trouble is, anger against the Israelis is almost certain to grow even faster than against Hizbullah. Many Lebanese owe a great deal to Hizbullah's clinics, schools and other basic social services in the areas it dominates -- underwritten, of course, by hundreds of millions of dollars from Iran. ...

As I read that, suddenly I kind of remembered reading something similar about the time that Hamas made a huge gain in control over the Palestinian government. Sorry I can't remember precisely where I saw it. I do remember it was in either of the two newspapers I get or Newsweek. What I remember is that in all the furor over the shift to a terrorist group being in control over what was already a delicate situation, someone noted that many Palestinians voted in favor of Hamas candidates because they could be counted on to follow through in assisting them to meet their basic needs (clinics, schools, etc.).

Um........ Doesn't that sound like what Christians are supposed to be doing?

I wonder how things might have gone differently if the world had arrived with engineers and construction equipment, physicians and nurses and medical supplies, teachers and books, instead of military force and materiel. Guess I'm just an idealist at heart. Maybe someday we'll get there, but I'm not counting on it in my lifetime. *sigh*

Well, it's time to face the world again. Much to do. Little time to do it. 'Til later!