Outside the box

While the Corn Islands off of Nicaragua get torn up by Tropical Storm Ida, we had a dawn as subtle as the breeze barely moving leaves and water.


We've been incredibly fortunate this year as has the Caribbean as a whole, with seriously powerful storms being deflected by shear before they reached us. As isn't unusual for this point in the season, Ida formed to the west of us. But there are people there too, in Nicaragua and Honduras and their satellite islands, in conditions much like many of us in the island chain. Poorly built wooden homes that don't withstand much at all alongside well built homes and resort hotels and compounds.

When I first paid attention to the Corn Islands, I felt an affection for them as they sound much like the island I live on now. Like Culebra, they are jewels that are slowly being discovered, with small populations. Fifty miles offshore, they are as vulnerable as they are wonderfully isolated. While they have been through much worse than Ida, it just doesn't take much on small islands to make a mess. Keep the people of Central America in your thoughts today, Ida isn't done yet.

The moon this morning, while on the wane, was showing her potholes quite clearly.
I always have this urge to tip her up just a little bit more so I can see what I can't see.

One of the last of this batch of papayas, brighter than the sun

If you aren't familiar with M.F.K. Fisher, and you have any interest in food and reading and writing and life, you should get to know her. She wrapped a few dozen lives into one, but broadly, she was a culinary writer who considered food one facet of life's pleasures, one tine of the fork of a spaghetti twirl. I came across one of her quotes yesterday that brought me to word love anew. "Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken." As Gail used to do when hot on sharing a point of view, I must poke you hard in the arm and say, "Am I right? Am I right?" Does Ms. Fisher not nail it? I believe she does.

Start practicing; have a thankful Thursday.