There is a running joke that the Indians of the Americas (them what weren't instantly enslaved)


sold land that they had no intention of living on at the

cheapest price to the clueless honks who were hell-bent

on building their hovels near the river or the ocean

or the glacial fault.

It is true that many of the indigenous peoples of the land

now called the U.S. had a long memory about just where one

shouldn't park one's teepee (yeah, I know) or hogan (happy, now?).

The world has a history of disasters and of ignorance of same.

Do you know how near the ruins of Pompeii people have been

living for the last 2000 years?


Do you know how many times New Orleans has been swacked in the

past?

Did you ever hear of the Johnstown Flood or the destruction

of Galveston?

The Burning of London or the Chicago Fire?

It has often been remarked in the last decade how capable

and enthusiastic people can be about recovering from a

disaster, of the incredible human spirit that allows a phoenix-

like resurrection from the ashes in the face of what seems

like an occasion for total despair.

Rarely has anyone spent much time reflecting on the stupidity

that leads to the mob-like behavior of refusing to learn from

a damaging experience to the point that any rational

thought of absconding to safer ground en masse permanently

and selling the tainted ground back to the Indians (I am joking,

of course) is drowned in the sea of an enthusiastic lust

to bring things back to normal.


Sitting on a powder keg and whistling Dixie hardly constitutes

normality.


Hmm. Wonder what happened where I live?

Where's that travel brochure for Beirut?


But, let's be sensible. People have homes. Not just buildings,


but communities and memories.

When their sense of community is stronger than their common

sense, who is going to blame them?

Sometimes their neighborhood, their city, is all they've really

got.

And it's no fun moving to where people make fun of how you talk.


Disasters can happen anywhere on the planet, even where there is no

historical precedent. And, as someone said with regard to another

recent incident, living in fear is no life at all.