Since I have been in Elk Park the weather has changed considerably. There was hardly any snow when I got here to now having a couple feet of snow. Also we have only been below zero a couple of times and just for very short periods of time. That may change, if the forecast is correct, in the coming days. Yesterday it snowed off and on all day. It will be nice to see some sun at some point. The last couple of days the sun has been very limited.
I remeber as a kid having many winters with much more snow than we have now and much colder temperatures. However, I don’t remeber the amount of wind that we have had since I have been here. We had winds when I was a kid but not of the strength, speeds and durations that we have been having the last few weeks. These winds have blown a lot of snow around.
I am heartbroken about the fires in California. My rotary club’s district (District 5300) includes a good portion of the area impacted. We have had a number of Rotarians who have totally lost their homes. Our club is having a special meeting this evening to discuss what our club can do to support relief efforts.
The outcome of this fire is going to be a lot like Covid. It is going to be multi-generational and is going to have a huge national impact economically on how we live our lives point forward. Let alone the psychological effects that it is going to have on those actually experiencing it first hand. Many people in these areas live paycheck to paycheck. Some were banking on having their homes as their retirement nest eggs. That has now gone up in smoke. I don’t know how many people I have run across in my life who made economic killings on California real estate, but it is a bunch.
Thinking about this, I wonder if this will be one of these events that archeological folks have come across in prior civilizations. They find cities or communities that were abandoned and wonder what drove them to become abandoned.
I wonder if parts of LA will just become charred ghost towns. Many of these folks are not going to be able to re-build and/or will not be able to rebuild quickly. I am sure there is going to be a run on and shortage of all types of building materials. As such, pricing for these materials is going to go thru the roof. Also where is all the labor going to come from to clean up and rebuild, especially if we have mass deportations coming in the next week. I mean this is a apoplectic type situation we are seeing play out. I think you will see a fairly significant migration of people out of the southern California area (more than we have already seen).
Anyway it is a scary start to a new year and I wish I could have some kind of faith in the incoming administration to handle this, but I do not. The political fighting that has already been started is sickening vs rolling up sleeves and working together to get these fires out and people taken care of. That should be the first priority, there will be plenty of time afterwards to cut the throats of those that were negligent in their duties.
There have been lots of efforts to get resources down there. Several Montana communities (including Butte) have sent equipment and manpower down to CA to assist in fighting the fires.
There are so many things that are happening that are sickening such as looting and the fact that some of these fires may have been caused by arsonists. There are cases where the results for these types of crimes should be immediate punishment and that punishment should be severe (death penalty) but that won’t happen either.
There have certainly been things that have happened that do give you hope in humanity, unfortunately they don’t always get the spotlight that the negative type stuff does. I guess negativity sells better.
Please continue your prayers for my Aunt Betty. She is not doing good. I pray that she could just go peacefully. As I have said before, there are things worse than death. Unfortunately, that is the situation she is in. I wish I could get Dad over to see her one last time, but that just is not possible at this time.
Well I need to get a move on. Dad has a couple of home health people coming today, so need to get him up and moving and getting him back on his regular schedule. He has been getting to sleep in while I have been here, but that is coming to a end so need to get him back in to his normal routine.
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