This post is about a few hurricane thoughts. My area is under a tropical storm warning and hurricane watch, but we’re not expected to get anything nearly as severe as what Florida suffered yesterday. I had the basic supplies, pulled out flashlights and lanterns to check batteries a few days ago, bought a couple more cases of bottled water and a few other things. Like just about everyone else, I’m following the weather reports and local advisories closely.
I’m also getting ready to make two pans of lasagna, one to take to a neighbor and from the other pan I’m going to deliver some to an elderly friend this afternoon. I’ve got salad stuff too and garlic bread. That seems a better use of my time than staying glued to the media hurricane hysteria. While getting weather updates is important, staying glued to “crisis” news is not good for your mental health.
I see a lot of people online overreact to every media crisis spin cycle. The FL hurricane will draw massive ratings, so even liberal media switched to that, despite not wanting to give FL governor, Ron DeSantis, airtime like that. He’s been calm, really organized with his briefings and he presents concise information, which I like. I find his leadership in this crisis pretty impressive and as my son reminded me yesterday, FL really dodged a bullet in that FL governor’s race, because they could have ended up with Andrew Gillum, the guy who got caught with a male prostitute and strung out on drugs… and, oh he recently was accused of wire fraud.
Leadership in a crisis matters and I remember Trump creating unnecessary drama during a hurricane and drawing lines on a hurricane map with a Sharpie, rather than staying focused on the emergency plans. When people’s lives are at risk, it’s reassuring to have leaders who don’t get sidetracked by media and partisan political drama.
Twitter is the absolute worst social media platform for hot take news drama, where the journalists, pundits and other blue checkmark people flit from being “experts” on one topic to the next, as spin cycles change. They’re all epidemiologists when the news is fixated on a COVID story, Ukraine experts when it’s that crisis, financial experts if it’s the economy or world economic problems, and in the past couple days they’re blabbing about the Nord Stream pipeline leak. Liberal talking heads blame Putin and right-wing talking heads are blaming Biden. Tucker Carlson went all-in on blaming the US and since he’s been opposed to the US and other Europeans aiding Ukraine from the start, same old, same old. And, of course this ramped up another WWIII frenzy on several social media platforms. I don’t know exactly what happened with that pipeline leak and neither do any of the people blabbing about it.
Of course, this pipeline story led to another round of people online talking about “preparing for war.” If you’re prepped with food, water, basic supplies, there’s not a darned thing you can do to “prepare for war.” Sorry, I’m not preparing for a nuclear attack. I served in a Pershing missile unit, have read a lot about nuclear issues over the years, but I’m not living my life in fear of a nuclear exchange, because frankly, that would set off so many other dire world events, that radiation fall-out might be the least of our worries. All I am doing about “preparing for war” is praying for God to save the world. And today, I’m praying for the people of Florida and all the people still in this storm’s path.
Stay safe everyone.
Pray for peace.
Update: It’s after 5 pm and we still haven’t gotten any rain, but it’s pretty windy where I live in SE GA.
Just to be clear, I do take preparedness seriously and I will continue to try to be more prepared, but I believe in preparedness more as a lifestyle, not reacting constantly to news or stories flitting across news media or social media, for which I have no control over. I’m not going to run to the store and buy more stuff in a panic every time there are more hysterical stories about politics, world affairs, the economy, WWIII or a potential nuclear exchange, because that’s just panic reactions. Speaking of stores, my local Walmart store closed at noon today and won’t reopen until Saturday morning.
It’s understandable to be concerned or even alarmed by all the serious problems in our country and the world. The growing chaos is alarming, however we still have to live our lives and not let our lives become only about preparedness. I’m trying to put my energy toward the things I can do – not worrying about WWIII or nuclear war, which I can’t do a thing about.
The other day I checked that the emergency lantern I gave my elderly friend last year works, but I was concerned about what if the power goes out and she’s walking around in her house somewhere. So today when I took her some lasagna and salad, I took over a touch light I bought and I stuck it on the seat of her walker. I sat with her and had her turn it on and off several times. She wants to stay in her own house, so I was trying to think of something easy for her to have light if she was moving around the house and the power goes out. I thought about a head lamp, but she would struggle fiddling with that. Then I thought these touch lights are so easy and it could be stuck on her walker seat. She told me she wants more of these touch lights to stick around her house.
I had my husband deploy to war twice and one of my sons served in the Air Force and deployed to Iraq. My youngest sister, was in the Air Force and she deployed to Afghanistan in the early years. I know what it feels like to have family in harm’s way. When my husband deployed there were no cell phones and families had to go about their daily lives – take care of the kids, do the laundry, pay the bills, deal with any problems that occurred. Many military wives even had babies while their husband was deployed. You just carry on with life, because that’s the best thing you can do for your spouse and it’s the best thing you can do for your family and yourself. Sitting around worrying about WWIII is wasted time and energy. Worrying about a nuclear exchange even more so. That was my point.
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