Christmas Wishing

As much as possible, I hibernate this time of year, shut out as much of the holiday madness as is feasible, and keep my wallet in my pants.

It wasn't always so. Years ago, for reasons that are now hard to recall, I shopped with a frenzy, buying my children anything they expressed even a passing interest in owning. It was a strange period, my brief affair with consumerism, but it has faded along with the color of my hair.

Today's skies are clear blue with puffs of cumulus clouds sharply lit by the sun's radically low arc to our south. Migrating birds are stopping over in the Bay Area now, as they have for time immemorial.

Scientists worry whether many bird species can survive, however, due to diminished green zones in over-developed California.

Offshore, migrating whales and fish species face similar threats. A massive "dead zone" is expanding outward from the mouth of the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing can they live.

Scientists visiting the most remote atolls on the planet are shocked to find them coated with plastic trash. Japan's air pollution worsens courtesy of China's expanding truck fleet.

Anywhere, a natural disaster strikes -- earthquake, flood, hurricane, tornado, severe snow storms or rains -- the poor die in droves. Huddled together on the marginal lands, without defenses or the resources to escape, monster storms (like Katrina 2005) cull the human population of its young, old, weak, poor.

Like herds of antelopes followed by tigers, cheetahs, and other predators, monster storms stalk us, waiting for a chance to pounce. As I have done previously, I'll be presenting a list of non-profit grassroots groups down along the Mississippi Gulf Coast for those able and willing to make a charitable contribution this holiday season.

Two years and four months later, Bush's great shame remains a blot on our society's myths of equality. Many remain homeless; some kicked out of the cheap FEMA trailers by one ruse or another. Bush fought his illegal war in Iraq, leaving the Gulf Coast without any National Guard troops to cope with the staggering destruction Katrina leveled from Florida to Texas.

Whoever the next U.S. President turns out to be, (s)he will inherit an obligation to make the Gulf Coast whole again.

That can begin by withdrawing U.S. troops and National Guard units, and sending them home to Mississippi, where they should be constructing affordable housing, schools, and small businesses.

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