Hurricane Jeanne is now visiting in Boston. They forecasted some rain for mid morning today, and more rain for later this evening. On my way to work at 8:00 it was already pouring down and the streets are starting to flood. Folks on their morning dog walk or jog were caught without umbrellas and running helter skelter through the park. The hard rain now seems to be over. There is not a breath of wind, so I guess this Hurricane blew itself out over Georgia. I feel sorry for the people who can't get to their homes yet. Hopefully they can all get back to normal soon. It is probably a good thing for them that President Bush's brother is Governor of Florida. Boston can use the rain, so it feels like a good thing for us.
A book study group is starting at church as part of World Hunger. We have taken the "Care" committee and combined it with this program, so I would like to call it "Care About World Hunger". The book we will start off with is Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari which I read on vacation this summer. He travels the length of Africa from Cairo to Cape Town, going into areas that are off limits to tourists amid warnings of grave danger. He travels anyway he can, by train, dugout canoe and cattle truck. He eats what he can find to eat and visits some very nasty places. It is a tough subject, but the book is very interesting and "fun" to read. What he finds there is devastation and ruin of an economy and a culture. It is not pretty. He happens to feel that too many aid organizations have ruined people who otherwise might want to work harder. I'm not sure about that yet, but will read more on the subject. Just getting interested in this, and reading about it, makes me feel that there might be something people can actually do to help. The first part of knowing what the solution is, is to understand the problem. Our church World Hunger group meets this week to find out how we can schedule our World Hunger appeal into our calendars and keep the subject on the radar screen of our busy everyday lives.
Who knows? Maybe we can help. More later. Fare well for today my friends.
