If Only Justice Were So Easy

What I wanted to show you was weather.com's radar picture of our area of the world this morning. What a hoot. After my posting about only half of New Mexico having snow, no, we haven't had snow, but we sure were cloudy.

So I went onto weather.com and looked for the radar of our area. For 600 miles in all directions it was absolutely, totally, spectacularly clear. Except for one tiny dense little green yellow and red mess over, you guessed it, Las Cruces and El Paso.

It seemed like immediate justice for one of my recent posts. Ah, if only justice were so easy. But Saddam, Bush, Massachusetts lawmakers, well, you know the list, prove over and over again that there's no one up there in the sky fixing every little thing. (This does not mean I have no concept of God - rather that my concept of God is about the large processes through and by which the details happen, but not about each detail itself -- indeed my concept of God is to large be encompassed in human language or understood by the very tiny limited human brain, but that's another issue.)

Oh, I bless the universe when a fine parking space opens up, yet again, but I do not delude myself. I also remember the 2,500 women and children who took shelter in a Catholic cathedral in Ruanda and were mown down by machine guns for their trouble. Yes, I know that how one faces a crisis can turn it into an opportunity -- but it didn't for the Ruandan women. And I remember the old Hebrew story of the ancient ship that set sail on the Mediterranean, only to be caught in a storm, broken up, and lost without trace. From that wreck, half the sailors were saved by other boats, but half were lost.

On their return, the saved sailors put up a large brass plaque in the temple, blessing God for His care and their safe return. But one dark night, the widows of the sailors who had been lost snuck into the temple and added their own, smaller, plaque below the large one. It read "Those who do not come back put up no plaques".

Would that justice were as easy as a cloudy day in payback for a whine about the Weather Channel!

We don't have any weather down here

These snow covered trees have nothing to do with me! Despite headlines like "All New Mexico Snow Bound" -- tain't true. Yea, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Interstate 40 all got hammered, 'tis true, and my heart goes out to all those newly sore muscles and folks dig out.

But, folks, that's only the Northern half of this "Land of Enchantment". Down here in the rosy southlands, even at 4,000 feet, not a flake. True, we had a little frost this morning, but you had to get up before 6 to catch even that. What with the sun, it'll be 60 or so as we go along. And yes, way up in the mountains even down south they've had some snow, but even our 9,500 foot Organ Mountain peaks, such a nice show in our living room, have had snow for only part of one day. No more.

Kinda burns me the way the northern half of this state is so often reported as the whole place! The same way it burns me that the Weather Channel on TV ignores this highly populated area entirely. If you've got a satellite dish for your TV reception, check it out.

If you're on Cable, at eight minutes past the hour, and eighteen, and twenty-eight, etc. you get a little candy called "Local on the Eights" on the Weather Channel, with your local weather. But if you're on DISH or DIRECTTV, then "on the eights" you get a running sequence of weather in cities all over the US. Here's the thing. In that list of cities, you get places that aren't exactly major cities, like Grand Rapids, Michigan -- nothing personal, GR, I've lived there and I like you. But you never see El Paso, Texas. Chew on this, thinkers. Population of Grand Rapids, MI 197,800. Population of El Paso, TX over 700,000 and growing fast. Not to mention another quarter million of Las Cruces and environs. Or the fact that El Paso and Juarez, Mexico are closer twin cities than Minneapolis/St. Paul, indeed, the largest population center on any international border in the world, at over 2.2 million. But can we get any local weather news from the Weather Channel? Forget it.

Check it out, TV spotters. El Paso is the spot where the weather people stand. They turn left and point East, or right and point West (that's how they turn, you see the opposite, oh Gawd this is getting complicated) -- we live under their b......y hips, and never know what the b....y weather's going to be. ::triple sigh::