Weather Watchout

 The earth is not ever completely stable however we wish it so. Since its first times, our world has been evolving and humans are part of this globe. Like all the other animals on our planet, we do our best to survive whatever our lives are presented with, in whatever ways we choose to deal with them. Unlike the other animals, we humans have brains that are highly creative and contemplative. We learn. We can learn to adjust our lives to meet challenges as do other animals, but we can do more. We are not content with simply surviving, we strive to do better in whatever way that we can invent. Most of what we do is positive, but negativity exists also. In the last few decades, our human selves paid attention to destructive human ways and a vast effort to be better people, arose more than ever. Now, during the past years, weather changes have caused upheavals that upset the balance of natural forces and some of them have been caused by Man's greed. What makes ambitious human beings good, makes them bad as well and there are those who care nothing about their fellow beings other than how much gold, a simple mineral, they can collect. It is a hopeless collection because in spite of the amount of gold, Man is mortal. He has an age limit. Speaking in terms of local issues, our lovely province, set on the shores of an ocean that is usually predictable, gentle and offering mild temperature influences. Of late, our temperate climate has been hit with floods, heat "domes", winds and rains, while at the same time, the ice caps and glaciers to our North, decline and there appears to be unheard of and unimagined surprising, and unpredictable to us, weather events. Today, I listened to my favorite government funded radio station and reports of November highway closures due to mud slides and floods. The announcer, an award winner, is someone who tends to ask challenging questions with a note of confrontation when a politician is interviewed. His questions posed to a Minister of our Province, were sharp and somewhat expressing a tone of "blame: for not being responsive enough to the recent  mudslide and floods of heavy proportion. Many people were stranded in their cars for more than one night as they were caught between slides and road washouts. Others' homes were destroyed by river overflows. The tone was that there was not adequate action or enough response by provincial government. The Minister's answers, however, were correct and informative and showed that all that could be done during such a surprising event, was being done. What I came away with, other than finding both interviewer and interviewee giving excellent presentations, was that we all need to be sharper at paying attention to weather conditions. When we are warned, we need to be actively responsive. We need to be sure to prepare for weather events at home and when and where we travel. No more, the report stressed, can we be complacent. Our creative and security sensitive natures as humans who want to survive, must be, when we are facing the natural changes of our earth, taken seriously and with serious effort. No more can we shrug off weather warnings.