Yolanda wasnt on my radar, until the Star Ledger showed me that she was going to do the kind of damage I would have trouble getting my hands around. R. has family throughout the Philippines. If theres a problem, he finds out. For whatever reason, his coworkers hadnt connected the storm to him. Theyre now in the loop. Yolanda knocked out the cell phone service. On Saturday it was back up and he knew that his family was fine. I wasnt so lucky, but Im OK with that. philstar/headlines/2013/11/12/1255752/zoraida-bring-heavy-rains-over-mindanao David Byrne in Bicycle Diaries got me past the news cycle on the Philippines. He rode around, heard about the US Government carpet bombing of the islands, saw the 3 big military bases and discovered that the Marcos family had achieved godlike status with the people. PBS played the story about how Journey has a lead singer that now has godlike status with the people. When I asked R. Marcos and Journey, the same?, he gave an emphatic yes. He told me about a few other things going on in the Philippines. When the Marcos family lived by the ocean, they replaced black sand with white sand over the stretch of beach that they could see. Throughout the islands, the black sand is being hauled away by the Chinese. Almost every tree has been removed from the islands to make room to grow bananas, that arent as sustainable as other crops. R. experienced Sandy close up in Toms River and kept in touch with Yolanda.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 12:06:00 +0000