Ethan and Ehlana:
The top news story of the day for world
news has been Hurricane Melissa hitting Jamaica, and while it will be days
before we know the full impact; we are sure that a category-five storm with
sustained winds of one-hundred and eighty-five miles per hour has been
devastating. Mom has spent most of her
day doing what she can through our charities to help with everything that will
be needed for recovery – though our efforts will just be a drop in a bucket for
what will be needed in the coming weeks and months. This storm is not done causing damage in the
region with Cuba up next and then the path has it going from eastern Cuba
toward Bermuda with hits on any islands on the line for that forecast. There is going to be a lot of need for help;
and we can only hope that the rest of the world steps up to send aid.
Compared to that, the rain we’ve had here
today shouldn’t even rank being mentioned, but we did get damp off-and-on today
– including during my football practice while the girls had their cheer squad
practice indoors and at the lunch break and were also inside for the band
practice. Tai Chi was indoors this
morning too; so we really only dealt with the rain at that practice for me and
while getting between home, the school, and church for our teen praise team
practice. Sophia hosted dinner and our
study session between practices and that was a lot of fun too; so we should
feel at least a bit guilty – and do – over not doing much ‘real’ work at all
today. Even after we got home from the
church, Mom only wanted to do a short Magi lesson with us and we did a vid-chat
with Cassie and Michael during one of their work breaks. Today was one of their time-hopping
adventures to the future and back again, but as we’ve mentioned before; it
really isn’t a challenge when the two islands are exactly one day apart for
those time zones. The flights between
islands are fairly-short hops; so they don’t really even use up as much time as
they have needed elsewhere to drive between meetings and project
locations! The only difference to normal
is that they spent part of their Tuesday while it was Wednesday in and around
the Samoan Capital of Apia! They also
had fun even with lots of rain, and while they would have more fun with better
weather; they also learn more about the needs of the people in the region while
seeing some of their challenges and how they deal with them in-person. The weather there was also mild compared to a
major hurricane, but then bad weather of all kinds has very different impacts
on islands compared to what we are used to here at home.
Moving along, Mom didn’t want us to stay up
late and work, so bath or Jacuzzi time followed the vid-chat and lesson; and
now we’re winding down toward nap time fast.
While the hurricane story got attention today, that wasn’t to the level
it would have if it had been hitting our country; and the usual blast of
distracting news headlines rolled on as always.
For example, one headline meant to anger people was about a Chinese ice
dance duo at a recent competition and how they are apparently being
investigated for holding a stuffed plush toy missile while waiting to get their
scores after one of their performances.
The teddy bear they were also holding was apparently not worthy of
becoming an international incident, but since both were likely given to them by
kids in the audience; the whole story is just silly anyway! That is a good example of the daily nonsense,
though, so that is why we’re mentioning it.
As for the ‘real’ news, the peace deal that
supposedly ended thousands of years of fighting between Israel and the
Palestinians seems to have more and more flaws as Israel continues to block aid
and is still bombing and killing Palestinians every day while making up
unbelievable reasons for their violations.
We are not surprised; and the rest of the world continues to do nothing
to stop the madness. Insanity reigns in
Ukraine too as their country is being bombed into the Stone Age every night and
their army is in deep trouble on the front lines. Reports vary, but whatever is true, there are
certainly thousands of troops caught inside two Russian cauldrons and thousands
more at risk of other encirclements as the Russian army continues the drive to
destroy the Ukrainian army. ‘Our’ leaders
continue to pretend otherwise, but Russia has made it clear all along that
gaining land isn’t a primary goal – destroying the Ukraine army threat and
protecting ethnic Russians in Ukraine are two major goals. We do not understand why the Ukrainian
leaders keep helping the Russians out with that, since this is far from the
first time that Russia’s army has set up these traps for large numbers of Ukrainian
troops and then closed the trap on them.
In this current case, they’ve offered the trapped troops the option to
surrender, but not to escape the trap; so this could end up being yet another
disaster for Ukraine. We don’t want to
get into every detail about the frontlines fighting, but do want to note that
over the past three or four months that the body exchanges between Russia and
Ukraine have turned much-worse for Ukraine from what had already been bad for
at least the past year. The ratio may be
somewhere between thirty and fifty-to-one now and there have been some
exchanges where there weren’t any Russian soldier casualties to return at all
while a thousand or more Ukrainian soldiers; bodies were returned by the
Russians. We’ll note that these
exchanges are only for bodies that weren’t taken home by their own soldiers; so
this is just a fraction of the total fatalities happening every month. War is ugly; and this one has already
destroyed Ukraine for decades to come.
Let’s stop there. President Trump was in Japan and will be in
Asia for the economic summit where he’s supposed to meet with the President of
China and other leaders, but we’ll save those stories for later in the week
when we’ll find out more about any deals that might actually mean anything to
help with reducing tensions in the world or stopping the trade war
escalations. We don’t actually believe
that the ‘hawks’ in our country or Europe will allow that to happen when wars
are so profitable for the billionaires, but maybe we’ll get a shock and be
proved wrong! We won’t hold our breath
waiting for that to happen – just as we didn’t expect anything real to change
in Israel for the Palestinians or that President Trump would actually negotiate
a true peace deal with Russia at the summit that he cancelled days after announcing
it. Okay, I also can’t resist mentioning
that the ‘deals’ he announced today with Japan are better for them than for us
and that Japan is also about to sign a peace deal with Russia; won’t be
stopping buying Russia’s natural resources; and has plans to do more trade with
them in the future. Japan’s largest
trading partner is also China, not us, so the bottom line is that they will do
whatever is best for their own national interest – not what we try to force
them to do.
Okay, I’m done – though really getting
going on a rant is very tempting! Ehlana
wants both of us to take happy thoughts with us into dreamland, though, so she
might try fluffy, pink bunnies while I’ll choose Naomi to be my happiest
thought! ;^)
Until next time, live with love, fellow
Magi of the Light!
