Paloma, Cuba and Haitian School Tragedy

Paloma seems to have been caught by the front and is slowly dying or falling apart or possibly hiding but it looks like the models verified for now and the forecast is alive and well and Paloma has slowed down and is fighting the upper level winds from the frontal boundary that is creeping slowly down across Florida. The winds ahead of that frontal boundary are to the south and slamming into Paloma who slammed into Cuba. A whole lot of slamming going on it seems. Hopefully she will rain herself out away from Cuba as the moisture center seems to have made it across the island yet the dying circulation center is still over land.

Water Vapor... Where's Paloma?



Visible... Where's Paloma?



Where's Paloma Going? Hmmmm Not sure.. drawing hearts or bees in the Florida Straits?




Paloma seems to have been caught by the front and is slowly dying or falling apart or possibly hiding but it looks like the models verified for now and the forecast is alive and well and Paloma has slowed down and is fighting the upper level winds from the frontal boundary that is creeping slowly down across Florida. The winds ahead of that frontal boundary are to the south and slamming into Paloma who slammed into Cuba. A whole lot of slamming going on it seems. Hopefully she will rain herself out away from Cuba as the moisture center seems to have made it across the island yet the dying circulation center is still over land.

This blog today is about illusions.

If you watch the water vapor loop it looks like Paloma is on her way to the Bahamas. If you look at the visible imagery you will see the faint image of Paloma's circulation center still over Cuba.

One picture may be worth a thousand words but two pictures tell the story a whole lot better.

So... going to watch the wind change in Miami today, watch the Dolphins win (hoping.. ) and going to take care of somethings around the house that need taking care of such as bills, cleaning and maybe making some healthy, delicious vegetable soup!

There is a possibility that Paloma won't fall apart and will head back to the west or the wsw or wnw later in the forecast period but today I am going to enjoy the blue skies, the noisy parrots that randomly found some tree in my backyard today and watch the palm fronds sway about outside my window dancing in the cooler breeze.

I wanted to write about Haiti on Friday and Saturday night but this is mostly a weather blog and it is still the hurricane season and with a Category Four Hurricane bearing down on Cuba giving birth to more misery on that already battered island I felt I needed to stay on track and talk about Paloma.

But... this is Sunday Morning. I have more time to write and have had time to think and put my thoughts together in some sort of lucid form so the rest of this blog is about the tragedy of the Haitian School Collapse and more so the concept of "Change" and how one person can change the world and that one person can be YOU!

Thanks for reading and bearing with me ;) while I ramble in and out and about on the topic of weather and on the topic of life.

There was an amazing story today on CNN News about a young boy dying of cancer who's last wish was not for a pony or a trip to Disney but to help others. Yup, a 12 year old boy's dying wish to feed the homeless... amazing story of a soul that is not focused on himself but on other's needs and believes he can make a difference even if he only has a week or so to live...

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-143215?ref=feeds%2Flatest




These are town people, parents and friends watching to see if rescuers have found anyone alive in the rubble that was a Private School that had possibly as many as 700 children enrolled and that collapsed on Friday. Amazingly Paloma missed Haiti yet misery found it yet again.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-haiti9-2008nov09,0,7478161.story

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&resnum=3&cd=1&nolr=1&q=Haiti+school&btnG=Search
(several videos available, most older but they tell the sad story)

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/us_world/Haiti-School-Collapse-Death-Toll-.html

It's another world down in Haiti. How different comes to the surface when there is a tragedy like this. Buildings are built without building plans, making it difficult for the rescue team to remove the debris unsure where support beams might be that could collapse further causing more damage. A mayor to the town of Petionville halted construction on the addition to the school amidst complaints that it was not being built properly, was not stable and could collapse. And, yet when the next mayor won election he allowed the construction to continue. The owner of the school is in custody but it is really the system that caused the problem? And, beyond that the poverty and disarray of political and economic insecurity that eats away at this beautiful island and it's beautiful people like a cancer with little hope of change. Before the four storms that ravaged the island this island was in bad trouble. An ongoing depletion of the beautiful forests that covered Haiti by selling the trees for charcoal have changed this island from a verdant, tropical paradise to a land that looks like it is high desert at times. Mountains once covered in deep green..the color green I have never seen before in my life that I saw in 1972 is now gone and a dead sort of nothing brown covers most of the land. I have friends from my old library who often would tell me.. "Oh, Bobbi you can't imagine what it looks like now. All gone.." And, that was 3 years ago, before the four hurricanes hit the island and took the brown mud covered countryside and washed it down like a brown bloody river onto the land in a landslide tidal wave that washed away thousands of lives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Haiti

You know we watched in horror at that tsunami that destroyed a village on the other side of the world and yet there is a place much closer to home that needs help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndxy5L4O7Os

Old video.. the death toll has climbed above 80 and will continue to climb. There were estimates of anywhere from 500 to 700 children attending that school. Oddly, ironically...the older students who cut class were luckier than the little children in pre-school who died. The death toll could easily be over 200 when all is said and done.

Fortin Augustin, the owner of the school turned himself into authorities and was officially arrested. Was he a bad man or a man who was trying to make a difference and in denial that the construction was really unsafe? Who knows what was in the preacher's heart that owned and operated the school that tried to bring education to that that part of Haiti.

Many hailed the school as a safe place to keep their children close to home and lessen the fear of their children being kidnapped. Children being kidnapped.. think on it. What do you fear for your children? It's a different world. People paid good money, over a thousand dollars a year to send their children to this school.. this was considered a good school that gave their children an edge and a modicum of safety in a world where safety where safety does not really exist. An illusion but the best illusion money could buy it seems. A friend told me, the school was always known to be built poorly but what can you do, there aren't a lot of options.

http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/detail/9933.html


These were working people in Port-Au-Prince, the people who have more money than the poor regions of Cap Haitian and who were able to try and keep their children close to home in schools. Everything in life is relative. These were the people who had enough money to give their children a chance vs the people who died in muddy raging rivers in the country side or starving from poverty in the Cap Haitian region.

Everything is relative.

When you look at the ads in the newspaper today and think on what to buy your children, your grandchildren or your nieces and nephews for Christmas and Chanukah and you complain on not having enough money to make a beautiful holiday think on what these people have or don't have and what they need just to live, just to have a chance. I taught school in Miami in my neighborhood in a public school that was probably 80% Haitian with a smidgen of Jamaicans and one or two stray Iranians or Ukrainians thrown into every class. At times I wondered if my life was much different from what it would be if I had joined the Peace Corp and traveled abroad. Beautiful sweet children who had barely been here more than a year or two but who were fluent in English and craving to learn, to live and to play. Their parents or which ever relative they were living with could barely speak English and my French is not that good but a bit better than my creole. All they wanted was their children to have a chance in America because back home in Haiti.. they don't have much of a chance.

Today's story on the school collapse shows the sad truth in that fact.

Haiti needs help, Haiti is our world.. To paraphrase Sarah Palin.. from my house in Miami I can see Haiti. I take Haitian Jitneys around town when in a rush and don't want to wait for the bus. I hear Haitian Creole when I go to the store and when I get literature from the City of North Miami Beach it comes broken down into three languages .. English, Spanish and Creole. And, when a story like this erupts it somehow hits home harder to me than it may to someone reading this faraway in California or Oklahoma. This is my world, these are my people that I shop with, talk to and know and feel their pain.

Maybe instead of trying to force some sort of peace that would be only be an illusion in the Middle East we should worry more on the lives of Cubans ravaged by five hurricanes this year and by two Castro Brothers who keep them locked in political misery. Maybe we should worry more about Haitians starving and trying to crawl out from the mud their towns have been buried in. Maybe instead of worrying on Nato and making economic treaties that outsource American Jobs to India we should worry more about America and the Americas.

Maybe we should give thanks for all we have and think on what we can give to others.

If a 12 year old boy who is dying of leukemia can worry on the homeless people he passes on his way to the hospital maybe we can worry on helping people in a place like Haiti where people need so much.

This is my world... I live in Miami, one of the largest cities in the Caribbean. I give thanks that some balsero made it to America and landed on some beach in the Keys and I give thanks that the children living across the street were able to be sent by their mother to their Aunt in America to go to the school down the block because they are safely in Sabal Palm Elementary and they did not die in the school in Petitionville Haiti this week.

There is a great saying going around these days.. "Be the Change you want to see in the world." Mahatma Ghandi.

Pick a cause, make a difference, be the change you want to see in the world...

If a child who is 12 who is dying from cancer can think he can make a difference... think of what you can do with the years you are blessed with and the assets you have that may be worth less than they were a few months ago but are so much more than what others around you have... share, give, pick a cause, make a difference, be the change you want to see in the world.




Who are you? What change can you make in the world?

Besos and Blessings Bobbi