Opus 2024-317: A New Kind of Rodeo?

You have all heard people point out that they don’t need your advice because this is not their first rodeo.  I’m sure you can substitute other words for rodeo, but you get the idea.

Relocate to Asheville North Carolina a few weeks ago.  The news media was telling you to make preparations.  They were telling you that a big hurricane was coming.  It was everywhere.  It’s all people talked about.

I would venture to guess that most of those people living in the low areas of Asheville just kind of shook their head and said, “This ain’t my first rodeo”.  How many times have they been warned in the past by the same news media that this was the big one.  How many times have they been warned to prepare?  How many times have they opened another beer, put another log on the fire, and switched to another channel?  In the past that has been enough.  This time, not so much.

I wonder how much of the blame for the disasters should be placed upon the head of hyped up, fake news people, fake weather people, fake FEMA people.  You may have your own personal source of worry.  I think of all the times my wife has been frantic that we were going to die because a hurricane was headed our way.  We live a couple of hours from the coast.  I think we are closer to the coast than Asheville is.  I have almost sprained my wrist patting her on the head and saying, “Now, now”.  Keep in mind this is the news media telling you this.  I’ve been in places where people have called us asking if we were still alive and we just wondered what they were talking about.  It’s kind of like the story of the little boy who cried wolf.  How many times have the news media use their search for ratings as an excuse to get us excited?

I don’t want to place the blame for the destruction on them.  I’m not one of those conspiracy people that thinks that the contrails in the atmosphere are changing our weather, and that the mean and evil Nazi scientists are trying to take over the world from their bases in Antarctica.  The hurricane was real.  The flooding was real.  The crushed houses and fallen trees are real.  I’m not sure anybody could have anticipated it being this bad.  I am sure we will hear someone on the screen saying, “I told you so.”  So I’m not blaming the fake news people for the destruction.  What I would be blaming them for, would be making people callus to their warnings.

While we pray for the victims, look for honest charities to donate to in order to help, and in some cases, load up our cars and drive in to be of aid, we should take to the heart the lesson that can be applied to our lives.  Do you have any groceries in the pantry?  Are they the kind of things that might survive this type of catastrophe?  A month supply of hostess dingdongs is not what I have in mind.  I’m talking about cans of vegetables, tuna, anything that would survive rough handling.  It’s possible that you could have a pantry full of food, and a flood could smash your house and wash it all away.  That is true.  But it’s kind of like having a firearm.  It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.  It’s also better to have it so that it can be confiscated by the government, than just stand there like a deer in the headlights waiting to be run over.

Pray hard.  Put feet to your prayers.  And prepare as much as you can.

Blessings.

homo unius libri