Learning from mother nature
published: Monday | January 3, 2005

THE EDITOR, Sir:

THIS 2004 holiday season finds many of us especially mindful of our tenuous hold on life and property, both in Jamaica and in south Florida. Happy holidays, I ask you? To my way of thinking, they might well be a lot happier if I could see a little more demonstration of the fact we'd learned something significant from the brutal realities that mother nature has so recently and so rudely presented to us.

I say mother nature intentionally, for lack of more significant explanation, deliberately, because it is both harmless and avoids any mention of God or God's will or plan. Better to 'blame' it on a very strict, but loving, 'mother goddess', who teaches us, with both a kiss and a 'cane', a hurri 'cane' that is.

So, what did we do wrong? Why did we deserve such punishment? Does it really matter? Maybe those aren't the right questions. Maybe the only lesson we really need to learn is the obvious one: we're all still fragile creatures, completely dependent upon each other, and surely there must be more important things in life than all too many of us were paying attention to before the storm.

I am, etc.,

ED MCCOY

mmhobo48@juno.com

Bokeelia, Florida

Via Go-Jamaica