Late, on a nice crisp and bright morning. You are sitting under a full
shading Oak and facing east with the usual mausoleum up some forty feet on your
right. Carol is reading the mail you picked up before leaving. Jill is cleaning
the house today and as usual you are making yourselves scarce. Irma is slowly
making her way to the U.S. and presently is expected to hit the Everglades on
Saturday. Once on land it is supposed to shut down to a level three, a storm
size you and Carol have witnessed firsthand. The anxiety has left for the
moment although the storm is some four hundred miles wide and Florida is about
a hundred and fifty; it is bound to do some damage. The winds and storm surge
on the east coast should be less though and far less damage from surge on the
west coast, at least the way you remember it. - Amorella
1140 hours. I remember the northeast side of a hurricane normally has
the most destruction from winds. I remember this but alas I am much less sure
of my memory than I was a year or two ago. I trip over my own feet more often
and I miss what Carol says; I assume this is because my hearing does not show
the clarity of detail it once did. Ageing, overall, is more consciously noticeable,
sometimes monthly. Carol is reading the morning Enquirer instead of her
book. She was too busy straightening or getting rid of or straightening piles
of papers, magazines, etc. before Jill arrived.
Do you think Linda will leave Florida in the
wake of Irma? - Amorella
1151 hours. No. A level three is a bad storm but exponentially less than
a four or five.
Too much noise from mowers and trimmers at
the cemetery for Carol but here at the north end of Pine Hill Lakes Park there
is also the noise of a large mower and less shade this time of day. However,
here you stay. - Amorella
1200 hours. The sirens wail as it is the first Wednesday of the month. With
the hill just in front of us it sounds different from home territory, a bit
higher pitched. Almost always reminds me of air raid drills in the fifties (elementary
school) and authentic filming from the Battle of Britain in WW II and
Churchill's speeches. What a voice, what diction and cadence Winston Churchill
had. I am glad I was alive to hear them live from London.
You are still alive, boy. - Amorella
1211 hours. True, but less so than in my
youth.
I disagree. - Amorella
1213 hours. I do not have or share the passion I had no so long ago. Age
is a mellowing agent.
No denying that my young man. - Amorella
1215 hours. Mellowing allows another dimension. I have always been an
observer which requires some objective distancing, but mellowing at a touch to
that.
** **
mellow - adjective
1 (especially of sound, taste, and color)
pleasantly smooth or soft; free from harshness: she was hypnotized by the mellow tone of his voice | slow cooking gives the dish a sweet, mellow flavor.• archaic (of
fruit) ripe, soft, sweet, and juicy: a dish of mellow apples.• (of wine) well-matured
and smooth: delicious, mellow, ripe, fruity wines.
2 (of a person's character) softened or matured by
age or experience: a more mellow personality.• relaxed and good-humored: Jean was feeling mellow.• informal relaxed
and cheerful through being slightly drunk: everybody got very mellow and slept well.
3 (of earth) rich and loamy. verb make or become mellow: [with object] : getting older does
mellow the hard edges around the anger | [no object] : fuller-flavored whiskeys
mellow with wood maturation | informal : I need to mellow out, I need to calm
down.
DERIVATIVES: mellowly - adverb.
mellowness - noun
ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense ‘(of fruit) ripe, soft,
sweet, and juicy’): perhaps from attributive use of Old English melu, melw- . The verb dates from
the late 16th century.
Selected
and edited from the Oxford/American software
** **
1225
hours. The above, "getting older does mellow the hard
edges around the anger" bothers me a bit as an example. I don't think of
mellow in terms of less angry but rather less dissatisfied.
You had lunch at
Prada’s Street Italian, meals you both enjoyed and now you are back at Pine
Hill Lakes and have inched yourself into a bit of shade for the front and
driver's side window. Carol put on her walking shoes and is out in the woods
and up and down hilly but shaded paths up to the earthen dam and back. Linda
called to say Hillsboro Schools are closed tomorrow and Friday so Jean, Jen,
Bill and Linda will probably head up to Clearwater and follow Gulf Boulevard
north to Georgia until Irma subsides or drifts more seaward and/or up the east
coast. - Amorella
1408 hours. Some still dismiss global
warming as the culprit, but the weather has
been following scientists' predictions from back in the early nineties
as to how the warmer climate might change the weather. Now, of course, if the
hurricane moves up the east side of Florida it may stay a category four longer,
which will not be good for that side and on up the coast at least to the
Carolinas. -- Shoot, what do I know -- I'm babbling like a weatherman.
Remember the Weather Underground? - Amorella
1415 hours. I remember the name and Bob Dylan and "whichever way
the wind blows". That's the extent of it.
** **
Weather
Underground
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the United States political organization.
The Weather Underground Organization (WUO),
commonly known as the Weather Underground, was an American militant
radical left-wing organization founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the
University of Michigan. Originally called Weatherman, the group became
known colloquially as the Weathermen. Weatherman organized in 1969 as a
faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) composed for the most part
of the national office leadership of SDS and their supporters. Their goal was
to create a clandestine revolutionary party to overthrow the U.S. Government.
With revolutionary positions characterized by black power and
opposition to the Vietnam War, the group conducted a campaign of bombings
through the mid-1970s and took part in actions such as the jailbreak of Dr.
Timothy Leary. The "Days of Rage", their first public demonstration
on October 8, 1969, was a riot in Chicago timed to coincide with the trial of
the Chicago Seven. In 1970 the group issued a "Declaration of a State of
War" against the United States government, under the name "Weather
Underground Organization".
The bombing campaign targeted mostly government buildings, along
with several banks. The group stated that the government had been exploiting
other nations by waging war as a means of solidifying America as a greater
nation. Most were preceded by evacuation warnings, along with communiqués
identifying the particular matter that the attack was intended to protest. No
people were killed in any of their acts of property destruction, although three
members of the group were killed in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.
For the bombing of the United States Capitol on March 1, 1971,
they issued a communiqué saying that it was "in protest of the U.S.
invasion of Laos". For the bombing of the Pentagon on May 19, 1972, they
stated that it was "in retaliation for the U.S. bombing raid in
Hanoi". For the January 29, 1975 bombing of the United States Department
of State building, they stated that it was "in response to the escalation
in Vietnam".
The Weathermen grew out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM)
faction of SDS. It took its name from Bob Dylan's lyric, "You don't need a
weatherman to know which way the wind blows", from the song
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" (1965). "You Don't Need a
Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows" was the title of a position
paper that they distributed at an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969.
This founding document called for a "white fighting force" to be
allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other radical
movements to achieve "the destruction of U.S. imperialism and achieve a classless
world: world communism".
The Weathermen began to disintegrate after the United States reached a peace accord in Vietnam in 1973
after which the New Left declined in influence. By 1977, the organization was
defunct.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia
** **
Later, you are home. You checked Route 19
from St. Pete up to Atlanta and found it to be mostly green on Google Traffic.
Linda is making dinner early, but you don't know whether anyone is actually
going to leave tonight or tomorrow morning sometime. - Amorella
1546 hours. Why did you mention the Weather Underground?
Because you were thinking about them. -
Amorella
1548 hours. I can't think of any relevancy other than Dylan's line:
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows". The
irony of course is that we do need the weathermen /women to tell us which way
the storm is going to blow. That's why we have been sitting around watching the
'Hurricane Watch' on The Weather Channel. Politically, we don't know how the
wind is going to blow either. I can't imagine an SDS styled revolution though. The
name would still fit: Students for a Democratic Society particularly in terms
of the 'Dream' students.
You have run out of anything to say, but all
this shows you are not dead yet, but you feel too old to join a younger cause.
- Amorella
1601 hours. I don't have the passion any longer.
You and Carol watched another episode of "Midsomer
Murders" and had leftovers for supper. Otherwise, you texted Linda who
texted back that they were staying at their home in Tampa for the duration. You
hope they have a couple of 'escape' plans should local weather events turn
particularly adverse. - Amorella
2226 hours. If we were in their shoes we would have left Tampa this
morning and headed towards Georgia on one of the older, lesser driven two lane
routes towards higher ground and a public shelter. Why wait? You want to magnify
or increase your ability to survival such an event not lessen it.
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