Over 10,000 feared dead after
typhoon Haiyan hits Philippines

Putting the still pictures of our family trip to Disney World on Flicker today made the trip seem much calmer and relaxed than I felt during the trip. Perhaps it was because the photographs capture one second in time but when we were there I felt my senses being overwhelmed by sound, visual images, smell and taste. The attack on my senses was more than I could handle during the 8 hour or more days we spent in a theme park. The rest of the family, my wife, son, his wife and three grandchildren seemed to do better at the time of the event and perhaps the pictures will be faint memories of a few things on the trip. Maybe it is because I am getting too old. Today was my wife’s, Pat’s, birthday but I am still the elder or senior in our family.

The wave of destruction in the Philippines by the typhoon, the world’s largest recorded natural disaster, seems to have been too much for media or anyone to fathom. The deaths of 10, 000 or more persons in one country are hard to grasp. More fanfare, fundraising and media attention was given to smaller natural or man-made disasters. I say natural and/or human-made since listening to an interview on the Tavis Smiley show of Humorist Harry Shearer Mr. Shearer, who lived part-time in New Orleans made a documentary “The Big Uneasy” about why the New Orleans flood following Hurricane Katrina were not caused by nature. There were a lot of human mistakes made that led to the devastating flood that cost many lives and let to such major destruction.

Last night Pat and I watched the movie “Impossible” based on a family’s survival of the 2004 Tsunami in Thailand. It was truly ‘impossible’ or a ‘miracle’ of how this family on vacation survived this natural disaster.

The world between the white cultural based American Disney World and the Asian based life in the Philippines seem so far apart that it cannot be bridged. The human made violence of Americans to Americans, like in latest public place shooting get more press time than the violence of the typhoon, natural disaster, in the Philippines. But deep down I believe that what is in nature is in us.

Comments

Please send any comments on this post to . Let us know which day’s post your comments pertain to. If the comments are appropriate we will post them here for you.