Tuesday, September 3, 2019. We see the reports that a storm is coming. We saw them as far back as last Wednesday. This is not unusual in Florida. It is so not unusual that it is hardly, no pun intended, a blip on our radar. It follows one of the most common tracks, coming off the West African coast somewhere northwest of the Bight of Benin, the name of which I, personally, have always found romantic, dangerous, adventurous; a name from novels of wooden ships, pirates, and slave traders. It crosses the Atlantic, glacially gathering strength like a boxer lifting weights, determined to bulk up for a fight far in the future. It creeps into the southwestern Caribbean, and our consciousness, like news reports of a string of grisly ax murders in a nearby town, disturbing but not personally threatening. Yet. It makes our stomachs tighten up a little, but we are not currently ready to allow it to affect our monotonous daily existences.
