Hurricane Mitch

Ochre leaves gather crisply in November days in the Garden State…..time to be canoeing down the Delaware…Mitch’s toll keeps climbing: ten thousand at latest count. Bridges (I’ve) crossed no longer standing, faces (I’ve) seen, dead or homeless. Mud fertile with mines floating free along the border. Nine catalogues and the Consumer Reports Buying Guide in the mail today. From Plough and Hearth one can buy a golf ball personalizer for twenty dollars. The Honey Baked Ham Company has a ham and flavors combo for $69.95. Hammacher Schlemmer has a cordless eyebrow shaper for $39.95. The Eddie Bauer Catalogue has 198 pages of fluffy, fleecy, stuff. The Chicago Art Institute Catalogue is selling Mary Casat-inspired bath towels and Victoria’s Secret has a feathery bra on the cover. They say this is the worst storm in 200 hundred years. The Patek Phillipe Magazine has a 50, 000 dollar diamond-studded watch on its cover. The Buying Guide lists...everything from vacuums, snow throwers, hair dryers, VCR’s, cars, home rowers and computers to cassette players and cell phones. One of the books I am reading is called The Professor and the Madman, a long-winded, inventory account of the compilation of the Oxford Dictionary, better is The Saga of Gosta Berling. Yesterday, I bought a Carhardt jacket for my brother-in-law. It was his birthday. The jacket cost $150. I was cleaning up my room today and in my closet I counted five Patagonia, North Face and Eddie Baur fleece jackets and three Harris Tweed sports jackets, a down vest, three anoraks, six sweaters, a dozen shirts and as many pair of pants; a genuine Art Deco dresser with a Tifany silver brush and comb set on top stands full of other stuff. The crater of a volcano collapsed killing thousands in a gigantic, thunderous rush of water, rocks and mud. I have at least six pair of shoes, three pair of which cost over two hundred dollars each. I own two pair of soft, leather slippers (presents) which probably cost more than fifty dollars each. My Rolex watch is worth twice the average annual income in Nicaragua. What about this computer? I own an antique 380 Colt Automatic worth a thousand dollars. What about my bicycle, skis, snowshoes, tent, my darkroom, paintings, photographs, antiques, stocks and savings? I own a Saab and a pick up truck. I am living in a three million dollar house. My cameras are probably worth ten thousand dollars. I have a canoe and a kayak. I practice chess for at least an hour a day. I even have several chess computers! Three nights a week I play table tennis. They say ten thousand people have died in mud slides in Nicaragua and Honduras? And a million people are homeless? They say Honduras and Nicaragua have been set back thirty years. They were already behind a hundred years! I am painting my daughter's house, inside and out. The inside a pretty peach and pink with bits of blue and white ceilings of course. Speaking of painting, Jackson Pollock is big at the MOMA. I took my brother-in-law to lunch for his birthday at Charlie Brown’s Steak House. Afterwards I went back to painting full of prime rib while thousands are thirsty in the tropics. The other day, last Friday actually, we installed a satellite dish for my mother-in-law’s TV. Five hundred channels! A hundred channels of sports, another hundred of movies, another hundred just music. None of them had anything about Nicaragua. What can I do besides send money? And, I still haven't sent any money yet. What am I waiting for? The Anthropologie catalogue offers "family, fantasy, serenity, whimsy, joy...and the happiest holidays." Am I waiting because I know I won't send nearly as much as I can afford? I'll probably send a hundred dollars. My ping-pong paddle cost a hundred dollars. My Hasselblad was stolen in Costa Rica but I can buy a new one. And I want to get a sea kayak so I can paddle around Manhattan to photograph. First I have to get the leaves off the swimming pool. And within a few days cholera and hepatitis will begin to break out in Tegucigalpa and Chinendega; Malaria and Dengue Fever in the backcountry. I like to take a long, hot shower in the morning just to wake up. I also like to take a shower before going to bed. I've read that all but one of the bridges in Tegucigalpa are out, the market under six feet of mud, the prison gone, whole communities washed away. Water. Now mud. Dead animals and dead bodies buried in the mud along with the mines. Tonight we had pork chops, sweet potatoes, fresh spinach and a mixed salad for dinner with White Zinfandel. Ice cream and pumpkin pie for dessert. After dinner we went to the mall to buy some things.