Old Things Passed Away

And all things became new and terrible.

From the SF earthquake of 1906 to Katrina to the tsunami to little ol' Iowa City -- it makes you think going into yet another hurricane season, every scientist telling you that even if we significantly curbed our greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the global temprature will still rise 4 to 5 degrees anyways -- that we live in a state of constant disaster. My aunt Charlene will read my stories and sometimes say, you write an awful lot about diasters (or floods, apparently, to be specfic, but I'm an equal opportunity employer of catastrophe). Maybe I do. We live in disastrous times. Hell, the modern age is the age of the disaster, dating back to the Titanic, the Hindenberg, even the Triangle Shirt Factory; you tire of it. You grow immune to it and the only way it can affect you is by humbling the disasters that preceeded it in size and scope. Writing about it, removed from it as I am here in Waterloo (though, increasingly less so) helps navigate the way through, and helps keep the insult and onslaught of it all alive, and real, and appreciated.

Lots of IC tornado pics and accounts from Babies Are Fireproof.

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