The Sounds of Rain... What Happened in 2010 and Miami History

Woke up this morning to the sound of rain, tropical sounding rain almost... real rain, rain pouring down washing all the traces of winter temporarily away.

Maybe it's an illusion like the 80s station I am listening to but it's a nice illusion.

Got the window open and listening to the rain.

So, it's 2011! Hello 2011!! Today is the day to practice writing 2011!!

I like it. Looks like double exclamation marks!! 20!! You see?

Okay.... anyways... reason I am here today (other than I owe someone) is to complain that people are very self-centered and obviously lack a sense of destiny for what is happening to other people.

There was a headline on Drudge a while back that I kept seeing, but didn't click on. Joe Klein it seems wrote an article that said "Nothing much happened in 2010" and while I beg to differ with him I didn't click. I guess too much was going on in my life and I was just perusing Drudge to see if anything BIG had happened while I slept and to see what mood he was in or whoever was watching the site for him that night.
I chuckled. I thought... "oh really?" immediately followed by the thought, "I guess if he was Haitian he would have thought something big happened."

The funny part of this is...which is not so funny.... people kept mentioning it to me. People who were annoyed, as they thought the destruction of the Eco System in the Bayous surrounding the Gulf Oil spill and the Haitian Earthquake was "something." Some people even believe that the oil spill created havoc with the Loop Current and the Gulf Stream... not to mention some friends had oil wash up on their beaches in the Panhandle of Florida and in Alabama. Tell it to the Seagull that died Joe...

The person I spoke to in Payless who was trying to wait on customers and bring home money to his family in Little Haiti, despite losing his Grandparents, his aunt and several cousins in the Earthquake and about a quarter of the friends he grew up with all died ..... somewhere like 200,000 people more or less died in the Earthquake...hard to get a good figure it seems .... that to me might have eclipsed the BP Oil Spill that was one of the murkiest, darkest moments of modern life for it's effect on the ecosystem of a beautiful region and even darker wondering on what the effect may be from the solvent that was used to make the oil look like it was gone. That's about as much as illusion as me feeling the winter is over, because I can hear the sound of tropical rain. The 10 Day Forecast shows me not a day where it hits 80 in Miami and night time temps in the 40s.... the sound of warm rain falling is an illusion... just like the oil being dissolved. The chemicals went somewhere.. possibly into your next dish of Creole Craw fish Gumbo...

To the mother who gave birth in the lobby of an apartment building in Brooklyn, waiting for 911 to come and save her baby who died... a lot happened and a lot didn't happen in 2010... a sad, horrible story. She waited 9 hours she will remember, for anyone to come and help.... too late for the baby who died.

If you lived in Europe, or visited it you were stuck with a dust cloud that choked and shut down air travel. One of my closest friends was stuck in Paris (poor baby) for days .....that was pretty memorable. Air travel was not that affected after 911 even. She had asked me what the weather would be like, if she joined her husband on his business trip... I was right on the weather forecast, sort of missed predicting the earth, shaking, rattling and rolling and spewing forth ash clouds it seems.

It was a pretty big year for Poland... not often that Putin finds a way to knock off most of his political adversaries in Poland and manage to pull it off as if it was a Hollywood Action Movie. I mean, can you imagine if the President, Vice-President, Head of the Army, Navy, Federal Reserve Bank, Congress and the Senate all went "poof" in a plane crash and the only witnesses were the air traffic controllers in the neighboring state...one leader of state that missed the plane was after having tea with Putin a few days before.... hmmmmmnnnnnnnn sounds like something big happened in Poland, most of all the illusion that it wasn't an accident....

For Miami Heat Fans the Dream Team came together and it was a party that went on city wide as fans bought up tickets to see the Dream Team play in Wade County, Florida.



It's all a matter of perspective is what is going on here.

Yes, looked at the article finally. Saw Time's review of the year... weak... and the Facebook man being on the face of Time is a year or two too late if you ask me, guess there was a lot of advertising dollars involved in that one. My daughter who refused to use Myspace because she was on Facebook no longer posts much on Facebook....

Time, she is a movin .....

And, my last rant in the rain is for TWC who decided to make a show listing the Top Stories of 2010 and listed the 2010 Atlantic Hurricane Season as Number TWO (they wish...) and then made the TOP story of the year as the heating up of the globe. Nice, good political move there trying to jump on the Global Warming Bandwagon a dollar too late if you ask me...

http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/top-weather-stories-2010_2010-12-20?page=1

Seriously??

Well, seems December of 2010 was the COLDEST Miami on record, since they have been keeping records...




Lucky for Miami that the Winter of 1894-95 was soooo cold as it helped make Miami the city that it is as it was the only place in the South where there was no frost on the orange trees.

To quote from the link below: "However, in the winter of 1894, Florida was struck by cold weather that destroyed virtually the entire citrus crop in the state. A few months later on the night of February 7, 1895, Florida was hit by another freeze. That freeze wiped out whatever crops survived the first one, and the new trees. Unlike the rest of the state, Miami was unaffected, and Tuttle's citrus became the only citrus on the market that year. Tuttle wrote to Flagler again, persuading him to visit the area and to see it for himself. Flagler did so, and concluded at the end of his first day that the area was ripe for expansion. He made the decision to extend his railroad to Miami and build a resort hotel."

http://www.toptenofmiami.com/overview.html

This is a prime example of how "weather" and "climate" create history.... make history...change history. The importance of weather in the history of the world. Years from now, if and when, we find out what the effects of the solvent that BP used was we may look back at 2010 as a turning point in the evolution of how we treat oil spills or our knowledge of how to clean them up.

Years from now we may understand how the U.S. got lucky and didn't get hit by any of the many storms that formed and use that to help modify weather down the road.

I got lucky, I got to chase Bonnie and play at the beach with my weather chaser friends.

I sadly lost one of my best friends this past year, at the end of the year, it was a memorable year for me. I also got to see a few old friends that I haven't seen in many a year and that too was poignant and beautiful.

It was a year like any other... people fell in love, people broke up, people wish they had gotten together or not broken up. A child was born, a man died. The rain fell, the sky cleared up, the sun came out and then it rained again. Orchids bloomed on Lincoln Road and waiters served me Baklava Ice Cream at the Ritz and rollerbladers rollerbladed by showing of their skating skills and their red bikini and life went on in Miami....and Moscow and Montana.

I toasted in 2011 with friends at the Shabbos table with champagne, chocolate brownies and strawberries...and it was delicious and I know this year children will be born, people will die and the rain will fall and then the sun will come out again.

Besos Bobbi

Ps listening to 80s music on Jango lol...consistent ...funny



Something about that movie always bothered me lol..............and life goes on. And, seriously followed by "Private Eyes" lol thanks Fishing for the link...........rolling eyes.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY_wH_mGL5g