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!
