Saturday, April 19, 2008

Reconstruction -- and some beachfront ordnance is gone

In past recent issues the Stuart News has printed up what we need to know during the present Martin County reconstruction phase, following two hurricanes in the region -- a very brief history of the cement block business, descriptions of explosive ordnance found and removed from various sandy oceanside locations, record-keeping that documents waterspout activity, unusual seal and bird visits from polar regions, and a predictable influx of populations who "winter" in Florida from places such as Canada.

Which brings us to some facts that should be a warning:

Bear Point county park on Hutchinson Island has been the depository of rubble in the form of cement block chunks carried away from structures damaged by the hurricanes -- a one-after-the-other wind-wave-and-rain pounding of Martin County -- and placed along the Indian River Lagoon shoreline to stabilize adjacent sandy road/trail, which appears to be a satisfactory use and solution to the problem of eroding trailways in tropical storms. That, and a boom in rebuilding with the use of cement blocks yet continues apace, perhaps heralding a future windstorm cement-block assault force never yet experienced.

Waterspout activity can be attributed to fish aggregates that 'storm' shorelines whenever desirable food is cast into the water, meaning that the fish back each other to reach the bounty. Add racism to the equation, and removal of explosive ordnance during shoreline survey/ construction work, plus the reality of human death toll from the previous hurricanes, and the possibility that the region hasn't "seen nothing yet" looms large in the species' psyche.

Popular ethnocentricism dictates the persecution of specific surnames, such attention contributing to a death rate from debilitated 'man-overboard' boat-capsize incidents, during which other species perceive who is wanted and who is not within genetic pools. Yacht clubs are numerous in the region, as an indication of maritime social status, but do the historically-pestered-and-peeved relatives of Pocahontas care a whit?

Televised weather maps show post-capsize cloud formations that have a pinwheel appearance when photographed. The bigger the weather-map pinwheel, the more active the storm and water disturbance from -- whale sharks, ocean sunfish, manta rays, and giant squids hurling themselves toward a drowning victim from points throughout the planet?

'Civilization' has been the title of a magazine publication, not expected to be a 'reduction' of military diplomacy.

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