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Strategies & Market Trends : Take the Money and Run -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (7530)	7/6/2002 4:53:49 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17639

thank you smithee... it's just so sad, but what can one do? nature will have it's own way.

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (7530)	7/6/2002 5:52:10 PM
From: Lost1	Respond to of 17639

Water, which is so necessary for life, can quickly take it away Stories of great floods cascade through literature and religion lore, cast as destructive deluges sent to cleanse a sinful world and start anew. In the Babylonian tale, "The Epic of Gilgamesh," petulant gods sent a deadly rainfall that lasted for seven days and six nights; in the Old Testament story of Noah's Ark, rain fell for 40 days and 40 nights; in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, it poured for four years, 11 months and two days in the village of Macondo. One of the great paradoxes of water is that something so essential to life, with healing and purifying powers, is so often used in stories and myths as an example of cataclysmic destruction. There was nothing biblical or mythical about the flood of 1998 that covered South Texas, only an overwhelming sense of loss that is now being repeated in the torrent that has rolled through South and Central Texas for the past week and may continue into next week. The rain that fathered this flood isn't the work of vengeful gods, but an unpredictable and insidious design of nature. Insidious because when this storm has been spent, after its destruction has been measured in the number of lives lost and property damaged, it will be remembered that it all began as innocently as a summer rain. Insidious because water, without which there is no life, has claimed and hurt so many lives. The first rain drops that fell in the area last weekend were welcome and overdue, a gift to a region flirting with drought. Rain, water, life, gift. All good. Farms would be fed and the aquifer replenished. With a good rain, people could spend good time at home with good company, good movies, and good books while raindrops tapped against windows and slapped against tree leaves. On Monday, a good rain didn't keep a couple from enjoy dinner together at a restaurant, and it wasn't enough to keep boys from playing along Apache Creek. The rain stopped being good when it didn't stop, when it fell harder, when it pooled and gathered. It overflowed creeks and rivers and became powerful swirling masses of brown water that flooded homes, uprooted trees, tore apart concrete and washed away lives. The couple disappeared on the way home from dinner and one of the boys fell into Apache Creek. On Thursday, the bodies of the couple, Robert and Carmen Sanchez, were found in the floodwaters. Jose "Joey" Alejandres, 11, who was pulled out of Apache Creek by rescue workers on Monday 15 minutes after he fell in, died Friday after he was taken off a life-support system. The floods have claimed a half dozen others, hundreds are homeless and damage could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Death by water. Loss by rain. That which is supposed to be cleansing now roils and destroys. This year's flood won't become the stuff of legend or myth and its devastation won't be attributed to supernatural forces. It will be remembered for the amounts of heartbreak and misery that rained down unmercifully, and for the examples of heroism and people reaching out to others that this calamity is already yielding. Unlike the mythmakers and storytellers from ancient times, we can't blame the raging waters on raging gods. Life is as unpredictable as knowing when a raindrop will become a flood. To leave a message for Cary Clack, call (210) 250-3546 or email at cclack@express-news.net. His column appears on Mondays, Wednesdays