Plague Journal, No Rain
The morning comes, and I am awake. I ought to be thankful since I am alive. I understand that. Life goes on until it does not. We are in a condition of drought here in our area. Spring is the usual “rainy season.” That is another way of saying that we get plenty of rain when rain is needed most. This according to the Chicago Tribune:
Under normal conditions, the Chicago area would have already received 9.4 inches of rain by the end of April. Our current four-month precipitation total is just above 5 inches — a deficit of more than 4 inches. It’s the sixth driest start in 150 years of record keeping.
And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut often wrote.
The conflict in Israel between the Israelis and the indigenous Palestinians continues into the second week. The killing between Israelis, the dominant ruling political and military presence and those who originally lived on the land has been going on as long as I have memory. I was born in 1949. My father called the war “the Arab-Israel” conflict. (Dad could not understand why Jewish people could not follow the logical link between Jesus and the awaited messiah.)
The war seems simple enough to understand it seems to me. It is about land. Everyone needs to live somewhere. The Israelis were told by the victors of WWI, my grandfather’s generation, they could “have” the land. The term for that 1917 decision was the Balfour Declaration. Never mind that other people were living there. From that day until the present one side wants to take all of the land, and the other side wants to hold on to where they have lived for generations.
It is an old story. I am reminded of the fate of the indigenous people who lived in this country, what the Europeans did upon arrival. As you doubtless already know the United States has been and continues to be an unequivocal supporter of Israel.
I don’t think that we will have rain today…
