Hurricane Harbor: Hurricane Humberto & 911 Rememberances

Today's blog is dedicated to the Tropics today and all the possibilities... and later... my thoughts on 911.

It's very "me" a bit serious.. a bit silly... nostalgically remembering and living life.. the way we all do when we try to balance our thoughts on 911 with the world today and the world we want to create and build and we pray for peace...today and every day... as we watch the tropics every September 11th..... every year..

Let's start off with the tropical news of the year... Humberto made Hurricane Status... we can mark that milestone off the list and move on now...

Closed red symbol means Hurricane. Open red symbol means Tropical Storm. Orange Circle means "most likely" and "yellow circle" with 10% east of the islands means.... ALL of Miami is sitting up and watching.

Hello the second half of the Hurricane Season... the real HURRICANE SEASON...

You know that song..."Squalls out on the Gulfstream.."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qjzrYNDfEc

(and I must confess for a small part of my life I lived around the corner and down the block from Louie's Backyard and when I was lazy I'd walk over and watch the sunrise there... rather than a better bigger spot nearby... felt tired and then got inspired and I'm wondering if this is a real name Lola Faulkner and it inspires me... okay I thought it said Lois ;) and may email them and ask... Lord I miss Key West... not any shore will do though for a while I can be bought and love another beach... but it never measures up to that place you love the most... where you feel most home...at peace... ever fish for peace from the wrong pier? Doesn't work... it's like trying to catch humpback whales from a pier on South Beach.. ain't gonna happen. Peace is where you find it...where it exists.. floating in the pool staring up at the palm tree in the strong breeze that came all the way from Cuba just to rattle my palm fronds... Tom's pool... Key West... Tennessee Williams we all have fake names... even me.. it's part of being a writer... or computer programmer I guess. Must be the Key board ;) but then again I'm a Key girl... even got the pin somewhere... love this song......end of writing spontaneously...)

This search for the first hurricane of the season hurt my brain. It's in the Eastern Atlantic and it's nothing but a footnote in history ..unless it makes it all the way across the ocean... just a footnote in history that will be recalled when there is another late starting season. Unless of course one of those make believe end of the world scenarios on TWC play out in which cause... a solar flare may envelope Planet Earth tomorrow or a volcanoes may erupt of the poles may shift and oh gosh Humberto may be the LAST HURRICANE..

Ew ..sigh....

There is a yellow circle in the Atlantic that has every tropically savy South Floridian looking up and going "hey there's something out there" (sorry Alfred it was better alliteration than every savy Miamian) and so we are going to look at that weak system that the NHC took a yellow crayon to and circled it the way a teenage girl writes N.A.F. on her notebook when in love.

Note that there is a big blob of orange and yellow and it even has the semblance of a center but no one is watching... everyone is looking ESE to see if this area that many have suggested online might be Jerry could be the real thing... The "real thing" being a storm to worry on vs watching only half awake at some hurricane 1,809,954 miles away near Africa or what is left of Atlantis...

There's an Upper Level Low in the Eastern Caribbean (2013 the year of the ULL)

It's caught and held tight between 3 ULLs... one to the NE of it pushing it west and a bit to the south of west which makes the future forecast that much more delicious for real Floridians IF it holds together.

A lot of IFS ...but it's in the right spot and life is often about being in the right spot and not slamming doors on opportunity when it's knocking or begging...

Pencil thin yellow circle around this system... like a pencil thin mustache..barely there but everyone notices it... and wonders why it's there like that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyJ8_Afkud0

(MUST WATCH....best video I've ever see anyone do for Jimmy...w/o palm trees fluttering in the breeze on a beach somewhere.... unreal wonderful...reminds me of someone... )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPHnadJ-0hE

And 911.... Where were you when the world stopped turning..on that September Day?

I was talking on the computer to my friend about some hurricane that seemed a bit meaningless as it was way up there in the Atlantic not near Florida and we were talking... the exact moments I forget to which one of us said what first but suddenly they were gone..sort of the way Clark leaves Lois standing there feeling stupid except I knew why because with my Lois like mind I think one of the first things I typed was "it's the story of the year... decade... maybe century" The wheels always turning in my mind the way they do in a writer's mind who has written news copy early on...back when I used grammar and punctuation.

My daughter came in and may have said "put on CNN" (or Fox) as we were probably watching TWC just after the top of the hour hurricane discussion. She said a "plane" crashed into WTC and being just recently back from Israel she knew it was terrorism vs a random bad call by some pilot who may have had a heart attack or some crazy possible thought that made some sense... Followed by her brother also just back from Israel where he had been in the army briefly (if I have the timing right) and he agreed... another brother came in refusing to believe it wasn't an accident... even after the second plane..

They stood there bickering like kids do... I just kept seeing Japanese pilots bombing ships in the Pacific kamikaze style... my friend online was gone... took a while to come back and say something. I probably kept typing the first thoughts that came into my mind (possibly saved somewhere on his computer..) and we just ended up like the rest of America staring at the screen mesmerized... in shock..numb... changed forever.

Bothers me in a way that we have pushed that "changed forever" so deep down and we have to be reminded it happened on CNN... MSNBC is playing the day over LIVE and people should watch as it's more compelling in real time.

911... The Day Americans Lost Their Innocence and the myth of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean would protect them from an attack on American soil. The myth so often repeated in History classes in school growing up ... The world had changed.

In time we moved our muscles and went to jobs as if it was going to be a "normal day" and I went to the library where we sat staring at the TV in the kitchen unable to move...taking turns covering an empty library as no one was there... except the daily homeless patrons... everyone was home watching TV and the coverage.

I left the desk and ran back into the "lunchroom" to see what was happening and saw this image.

Manhattan was cloaked in smoke.. I asked "why" and someone said "one of the towers fell" and I stood there staring at this scene... the scene above.

I had an appointment for later that day.. it was cancelled after I went there at 1 and watched more coverage on the TV in the lobby. Everyone was watching TV and the coverage...trying to make sense of it all. A plane was missing in PA and something had happened in DC. They came out and said "all the appointments for today would be rescheduled" and I went home...and watched more coverage...

My daughter shut the Starbucks down in Aventura... no one was there in the Mall and everyone was afraid there would more attacks across America. Parents worried about their kids in school in small towns in Nebraska and Oklahoma far from New York City. Every one was in shock...

Reality began setting in...

"How many people were in the Towers"

"What happened in DC?"

"Who did this?"

"Why did they do it?"

"Could this really be Osama Bin Laden?"

"Why were Palestinians celebrating and cheering?"
...many were ...see picture below in the rebroadcast...

A few minutes after this MSNBC broke away to go back to the regular broadcast of names being read.

Know why? We don't want to face reality...

We want to believe soooo badly in peace and good will and we don't want to remember that many of the people we are trying to make "peace" with do not really like us or anyone who does not believe they way they do. Sorry to make an editorial here... just being honest. Make peace with peacemakers not wolves in sheeps clothings. Know the difference.

I guess MSNBC will go back to the live coverage AFTER they get past the segments I remember where they kept asking why some people in some Arab countries were rejoicing even when so many Arabs from many nations were killed in 911 who worked at TWC...

Sad....... but true...

It was Osama Bin Laden.... he had helped orchestrate a 4 prong attack on American shores on a day that will be remembered forever ...

There are wonderful people who are Palestinian and Egyptian and Arabic from every country and religion out there... but extremists of all types...all kinds do not see anything in the world but their way. Their way or the highway. Extemists are like abusive angry people ..except instead of destroying one small part of the globe they ruin it for all of us... but the real time video shows the story the way it happened. Sad, but true they danced and cheered. We cried. The families of those who died cried... a diverse lot of families from everywhere who happened to be in the WTC or in the planes that exploded in DC and PA.

Bodies were removed from the Twin Towers and around the scene when it was safe to go back in. Bodies were recovered from a plane that went down when brave men rushed the cabin and crew rather than have it hit it's ultimate target in DC. Flight 93 was scheduled to make a brief stop at Reagan International and DC would have had two terror attacks rather than the one at the Pentagon. For days and weeks bodies were removed.

Bush spoke.

We went to war eventually.

Young men signed up..and women... wanting to make a difference.

The world changed.

Where was I? Talking to my friend...getting ready to go to work after getting the younger children off to school and watching Hurricane Erin in the Atlantic and talking to my friend about other areas in what was the same list as this year...

It was said today on TWC if Erin had moved closer to NY that some of the flights would have been cancelled and maybe it might not have happened when it did..how it did.. maybe.

Felix was out there doing the Humberto dance...

On September 11th, 2001 I can bet you we were watching the area that was to soon become Gabrielle in the Gulf of Mexico... more than Erin up in the Atlantic in recurve mode..

 1  25.80  -84.10 09/11/18Z   25  1010 TROPICAL DEPRESSION

On September 11th, 2001 we woke up and we were wondering if the area in the Gulf of Mexico would or wouldn't get a name and where it would go... and then the world changed forever.

I couldn't tell you until this morning what we were watching... or that Erin was up close enough for the plume of smoke from WTC to be caught on visible imagery... but it was the heart of the hurricane season and we were tracking... and talking... like we do on any other September day.

Same named storm is out there today near Bermuda..near where Erin was dancing in 2001 though to be honest Erin looked a lot better. What an eye...