Banana Winds

Captain’s Note: With apologies to those in the Northwest who are watching thousands of acres of forestland burn out of control. We know about it, but right now we’re dealing with our own problems down here.

Yep, there's three of 'em!

This past week has been quite the wild ride!

Fresh off a hurricane that flooded the greater Houston area, Hurricane Irma roared through the Caribbean as a Category 5 and set her sights on Florida.

Mandatory evacuations were declared, and we watched (from a safe distance) as friends boarded up their homes and bugged out in advance of the storm.

We sat transfixed, watching the Weather Channel, wondering where exactly the storm would strike next and how much damage she would wreak.

Want a good deal on a boat?

We’ve got dozens to choose from!

(Too soon?)

A couple of the islands were 90-95% destroyed. Irma largely bypassed Key West and struck Cudjoe Key farther north, then entered the mainland on the western edge of the state at Marco Island.

I swear the Captain’s blood pressure rose just watching the news reports!

“A catastrophic storm!”

“185 mile-per-hour winds!”

“The Eye Wall! The Eye Wall!”

“Catastrophic!”

“Devastation!”

“Catastrophic!”

“Hunker down!”

Friends who actually “hunkered down” in the storm made a drinking game out of watching the Weather Channel!

Meanwhile we are safely nestled away on The Tiki Hut at Kentucky Lake, hundreds of miles from any weather concerns.

Captain’s Note: The remnant of Hurricane Irma is expected to arrive here on Tuesday, with wind gusts up to 30 mph, bringing maybe an inch of rain to our parched landscape. The lake is being held at four feet below summer pool in anticipation of what Irma might bring.

But what has really raised the Captain’s blood pressure are all the good religious folks who want to blame the storms on God’s wrath upon “the gays” and those who tried to “pray away” the hurricanes.

It is embarrassing sometimes admitting that I am a Christian.

I am not ashamed of Jesus Christ.

But I am ashamed of many of his followers!

Let’s begin with “the gays”.

If these storms are your god’s wrath against “the gays”, as so many Evangelical Christians claim, then why flood entire cities?

And conservative Republican strongholds at that!

Can’t your god find a more selective way of punishing those he hates without so much collateral damage?

I mean, even in the Old Testament Flood Story, God found Noah to be the only righteous man on the face of the earth and saved him and his family from the flood.

If it was your god’s wrath against “the gays”, why did Key West survive?

In fact, thinking back to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, much of the New Orleans area was flooded, but Bourbon Street remained dry.

Perhaps your god has poor eye sight, or maybe just bad aim?

Are you familiar with the scene from 1 Kings 18, where Elijah, the prophet of the Hebrews’ God challenges the prophets of Baal?

²⁷At noon Elijah began to make fun of them. “Pray louder!” he said. “If Baal really is a god, maybe he is thinking, or busy, or traveling! Maybe he is sleeping so you will have to wake him!” ²⁸The prophets prayed louder, cutting themselves with swords and spears until their blood flowed, which was the way they worshiped. ²⁹The afternoon passed, and the prophets continued to act like this until it was time for the evening sacrifice. But no voice was heard; Baal did not answer, and no one paid attention.

But the Captain will be nice and not taunt you… too much.

And then there were those who were going to pray away the storms.

Sadly, they didn’t decide to pray until the hurricane had already destroyed those Caribbean islands.

But not surprising.

In the Captain’s recollection, there has only been one instance of a Christian televangelist supposedly redirecting a storm. Back in the late 70s, Pat Robertson claims he prayed a hurricane away from his Virginia Beach headquarters.

Which is a pretty selfish prayer, I must say.

“I don’t give a fuck about any of those other cities, God. You’ve got to protect my TV studios though… in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

“And Jesus wept!”

So last week a group of “true believers” gathered on Jax Beach to publicly pray away the storm.

Jax Beach is on the upper northwest corner of Florida, which made it an unlikely target to receive much damage from a hurricane raging up the Gulf Coast. So this group probably saw a good chance that their god would answer their prayers.

Or not.

Jacksonville is flooding this morning as the outer bands of the storm bring rain to that sprawling city.

Then there was the TV evangelist who waved her magic scepter – no, seriously! – and “commanded” the storm to dissipate.

“I make a ruling that storm will leave this area, will leave the coast. I will not tolerate its presence anywhere on the coast of Florida. And I’m commanding it to leave and get back out in the ocean. At the same time, it’ll dissipate. So I command the millibars in that hurricane, you RISE right now. You keep rising, and rising, and rising till the storm will be downgraded, downgraded, downgraded!”

And social media was filled with “powerful prayers” to say for protection from the storm.

And what do all those “true believers” say when the storms come anyway, as such storms are want to do?

“The Gays!”

Um-hmmm.

As scientists have demonstrated time and again, hurricanes are a natural function of our planet’s weather. The hurricanes that strike our East Coast originate from weather conditions off the west coast of Africa. Hot, dry air blowing off the Sahara Desert mixes with the warm moist air of the Atlantic Ocean and stirs up trouble for us.

It’s science.