The coldest weather of the Winter has ended and I spent the day searching for beauty, Nature and peace ...
http://www.flickr.com/...
Today's photographs are organized into two folders:
H.M.S. Bounty -- Crescent Lake, Downtown St. Petersburg, the Pier, and the H.M.S. Bounty
Albert Whitted Airport -- The top of the Pier, downtown St. Petersburg, flowers and Albert Whitted Airport
Of course, there are plenty of birds and other lovelies which I encountered during my walk.
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The third week of January has historical generated the coldest weather which Florida will encounter throughout the Winter. True to form, last week's cold front generated a freeze and there were exactly two (2) days in which the sun rose to frost on the ground.
In the months ahead, there will be more cold fronts but none shall be as cold. I'm not complaining ... this is life in Florida. Winter is mild, summertime is like living in a steamy oven. And, of course, there is hurricane season ...
Since I have spent my entire life in Florida, I have adapted to this weather. People who live in more northerly latitudes must certainly have adapted to their own particular climate.
My greatest admiration, though, is for the Native Americans. They lived from the Arctic to the tropics to Tierra Del Fuego ("Native Americans" in this case meaning all of the native inhabitants of the Western hemisphere) without the benefits of climate control. The original inhabitants of Florida were much better adapted to this environment than the Americans.
While we might take pride in our technology and boast about our superiority to those people we replaced (by ... ), I must warn you that a day will come when the Americans will face the harsh climate without the benefits of technology. A day will come when humans no longer have climate control, electricity, automobiles, grocery stores, malls, the Internet nor any of those other things which we take for granted and consider an entitlement.
This world in which we are living is passing away. I don't mean either today or tomorrow or next year or next decade ... but this world is passing away within a geological blink of an eye.
Nothing lasts forever. Of course. Our civilization isn't exempt. Our nation isn't exempt. Our species isn't exempt.
Nature lasts forever, though. Four billion years young and at least another billion years ahead. Nature owns the Earth (regardless of humankind's pride and presumption). Nature also controls humankind's destiny (don't imagine otherwise). Nature is quite powerful enough to wipe out our civilization, too (without assistance, even, though unfortunately we are pushing Nature to a most tragic outcome).
The Native American civilization survived for ten thousand years without technology. If the Europeans had remained in Europe, the Native American civilizations could have survived for at least another ten thousand years.
Western technological civilization, though, cannot and will not survive for five centuries. We've burnt up the planet's resources, destroyed ecosystems throughout the globe, driven numerous species extinct, poisoned the biosphere with our pollution, and provoked the most radical sort of climate change. No, there isn't any way at all for our civilization to survive.
So you should appreciate the full magnitude of the tragedy which occurred in 1492.
Sincerely,
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/...