Mobile Alabama

I'm listening live via internet to a station in Mobile, Alabama as Ivan comes onshore. If you click on "Click here for live video!" you'll get what I'm watching. It must be so reassuring to those who are listening via battery to hear these calm human voices tying them in their shuttered, battered homes to the rest of the community. It may seem odd, my interest in hurricanes, but I live in South Florida and we've faced two in the past month and we'll maybe face one this coming weekend - so I sympathize as only a fellow sufferer can, with those in Alabama. I'm praying for them all as I listen. I'm praying that civilization is not overcome by nature; that the calm voices or community keep on talking through the worst Ivan can dish out.

It's going to be a long night on the coast of Louisiana/Alabama/Missippi/Florida and these good people in a Mobile newsroom are spending this whole night with those who need to hear their lifeline voices.

I cannot tear myself away. Outside now, in South Florida, there isn't even a breeze. Hard to believe that not so very far away, hell on earth is being experienced by so many. I've often thought of time travel at these times. Imagine, if you will, a Jewish person on a train to Auchwitz. Caught in an inescapable journey to death, but for time. If that person were able to travel back in time at that same location, they would find themselves in a totally different set of circumstances, delivered from the peril of their present. We're all stuck in now. The people in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana are stuck in now. If only they could get in a time machine and press a button. They'd be out of danger and into a new situation. They could always come back later, after the trouble has passed. We're victims of time and place, victims of gravity and the rules of this planet we live on.