Stuff Happens

Somehow or other, I feel like I've come through a long dark swamp. I had a dream last night, that even though I don't remember all the details, seemed to put a whole bunch of stuff into perspective for me. I woke up very early (for me), somewhere close to 5:00 am and couldn't go back to sleep. That means I got less than 5 hours of sleep, so we'll see how I do through the rest of the day. :) But I feel more relaxed than I've felt in several weeks.

So, what have I been doing? Hmmm. Interesting question. Staying close to the flat, rarely leaving it, in fact. My eye is the same, my vision is not good, and I still fear tripping and falling. Whenever I do walk anywhere, I walk with someone, preferably Mel, so I can hold on to him in the rough patches. There are a lot of rough patches here. Poor man!

But I have to admit, I'm bored with this flat. Sick and tired of the heat and humidity. Tired of reading the same old stuff on the internet every day. Tired of weaving. Tired of embroidering. Can't find my new cross-stitch project (where in the world did I put it????). Do not want to step foot into the kitchen (due to heat mostly).

Actually, I'd love to go on vacation. Where? Hmmm. Another interesting question. A few years ago I would automatically have said, "Scotland!" Or maybe I'd have said, "Egypt again!" Or maybe I'd have even said, "Greenland!" Of all those destinations, Greenland is the only one that sounds even remotely interesting - and safe! Oh, I'd like to go visit New Zealand, too, but that's not exactly close, and it's not exactly safe right now either (depending on where you are at of course - the earthquakes are located mostly in one area).

The earth continues to rumble. Radiation continues to spew up into the air in Japan (did you know that? The main stream media does not report on it - you have to go digging to find out what's happening over there. Click on link to read the latest info from Arnie Gundersen of Fairwind Associates.)

In fact, it makes me wonder - when was the last time you thought about Chile? People died in a big earthquake there not so long ago and there are still after shocks happening. A large volcano, Cordon Caulle, has been continuously erupting for a couple months now on the Chile/Argentina border. Click on the link - absolutely stunning photos! Amazing amounts of snow have fallen in Chile this winter (yes, it's winter there!) - so much that the storms are being called "storms of the century!" which is ridiculous since it's only 2011 and the century has just begun and no one knows what the storms will be like in 24 years.

When was the last time you thought about Christchurch, New Zealand? The aftershocks continue to rumble there, more buildings fall down each time, the city center is a ghost town, whole subdivisions are falling to pieces due to landslides, etc. It's pretty amazing, really, what God is doing to a town that bears His Son's title! But when I've looked at photos on The Landslide Blog, mostly I'm amazed and awed at what God does. Check them out: Images of landslides from the Christchurch earthquake Part 1. Be sure to check out all five parts!!

I could write more, about the volcano in Hawaii and it's recent lava lake collapse (really cool video avaiable at YouTube - just do a search). Or about the volcano, Nabro, that erupted without warning in Eretria.

Or about Comet Elenin. Good grief! There is so much garbage out there on the web about this comet, it is amazing! NASA had to take down one of their sites on it due to all the End of the World conspiracy junk people were posting. I'm sure they did not want to be a forum for spreading false information and having their name associated with it. (just guessing)

And the guy who insists that there have been volcanic emissions of some sort coming out of Southern California, actually in an area that Mel and I traveled through and played tourists in about 18 months ago. He's also into HAARP conspiracies, weather modification and other stuff. I'd laugh, but it's too serious of a problem, what he's doing, to laugh about it.

Sometimes I just have to laugh, though. The world has gone crazy! (It's a sad kind of laughter, you see.)

Literally crazy.

Rioting in London and other parts of Great Britain. Riots in Syria, with the government there actually killing close to 2,000 of their own people (maybe more, info is hard to get out of the country right now) in attemps to quell the 'problem'. Flash mobs in the US. Riots in Greece, Spain. Sit-in in Israel.

And so much more. The world has gone crazy.

And I watch it from my little computer, in my little flat, in my little city which fortunately remains calm and somewhat normal. What IS normal??? :) :)

Today the sky is very gray and it's much cooler, altho still over 80 degrees here at my desk, according to my thermometer. It sprinkled earlier, was dripping just a bit when I got up. We have really needed the rain - hope we get some more.

So, in the mean time, the grapes are ripening on the balcony, my grandson is getting ready to go back to school this week, my granddaughter is growing like a little weed, and life continues. And I pray for them continually.

I'm glad I dreamed last night. I feel so much better about it all. :) :)

Really!

Volcanoes, North Korea and Paganism

As I write this post, I have a volcano as the photo just below the blog title. Mount Rainier, taken south of Seattle last year when we stopped to have lunch on our way down to California. I also have a field of mostly very hot lava as my desktop background photo right now. I think it's really pretty and want to learn how to weave something like it: from HAWAIIAN LAVA DAILY Isn't that beautiful??!!

I love these mountains - volcanoes. They are beautiful. And dangerous. Rainier is still "alive" and could decide to blow it's top at any time, just like Mount St. Helens did 20+ years ago (or was it 30? I think it's 30+ years! Wow! Does time fly.)

Actually I am very well aware that that is not what happens, but it sounds good. "Blow it's top." "Decide to." Ha ha!

Volcanoes are going off all over the world right now. I read a volcano blog, (Eruptions, almost every day, reading especially the comments. I find them very interesting. It's where I find most of the stuff I've written about recently that has to do with volcanoes or the East Africa Rift. On another page at another site today I found an article that says North Korea seems to be expecting one of her volcanoes to erupt soon. Taken from The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea is this article:

N.Korea 'Preparing for Eruption of Mt. Baekdu'
North Korea has started preparing for a possible eruption of Mt. Baekdu, Radio Free Asia reported Wednesday. Quoting sources in Ryanggang Province, North Korea, the station said two geography professors of Kim Jung-suk University of Education involved in a Mt. Baekdu expedition team have recently been to Pyongyang to attend a seminar on Mt. Baekdu volcanic activity.

They said there were two evacuation drills in Samjiyon, Taehongdan and Pochon, Ryanggang Province since last fall.

The radio station said fears of an eruption were also behind the sudden suspension of the Mt. Baekdu tourism railroad project, slated for completion by 2012, and that of a mammoth tourism and athletics facility for winter sports nearby, to be completed the same year.

"Concerned about a possible eruption of Mt. Baekdu, the North Korean regime is pushing ahead with negotiations with China on the development of underground resources and urban buildings in Ryanggang and North Hamgyong Provinces," RFA said quoting a research institute official in Ryanggang Province. "The North apparently plans to secure Chinese help in reconstruction in case Mt. Baekdu erupts."

The mountain is sacred in North Korea, which claims its founder Kim Il-sung and his family were born there. In a bid to support the claim, Pyongyang has rechristened Mt. Baekdu's Jangsu Peak as "Jong-il Peak," after current leader Kim Jong-il. And his son and heir Kim Jong-un is often described as continuing "the Mt. Baekdu lineage." In fact Kim Il-sung was born in North Jeolla Province, now South Korea.

"The regime has publicized Mt. Baekdu as the symbol of the Kim Il-sung dynasty, so they are keeping quiet about a possible eruption," RFA said. "That could mean the damage will be much greater if the volcano does erupt." englishnews@chosun.com / Feb. 11, 2011 13:18 KST

What I find the most interesting about this article, though, is not the volcano - it's the people of North Korea and their worship of Kim Jong-il and the mountain/volcano that represents his lineage. Wow. Am I really understanding what this is saying?? That in this communist country the people worship Kim Jong-il, and his son Kim Il-sung, as gods?!!?

I know that the persecution of Christians is terrible in North Korea. I know that the people live in indescribable misery and poverty due to the communist regime headed by this man and his son and close generals, etc. Somehow I never thought that the people would worship him - or a mountain that he associates himself with.

I hope that mountain blows it's top. I hope it has an enormous eruption. It would be wonderful if, in that eruption, anything built near it that has anything to do with this man/family who dares to compare himself/themself to Almighty God, would be totally and completely destroyed. Wiped from the face of the earth. Burned and covered in beautiful red hot lava.

Other volcanoes are erupting right now. There is a whole long list of them. The earth quakes, volcanoes spew forth lava, gas and ash, meteors graze our atmosphere, unusual clouds continue to appear more and more frequently. God speaks to man through nature - and man refuses to listen. We worship ourselves, we worship others, we worhip the created rather than the Creator.

Yes, I like volcanoes. I like earthquakes. I like nature, in all of it's wild and glorious beauty and danger. But I worship Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

Kirishima and Sakurajima

I've been lurking about for the past few days on
Erik Klemetti
Eruptions
Hot stuff from Earth's interior .
There are several volcanoes going off around the world right now. Some are just puffing, others are exploding. Kirishima and Sakurajima are two, located not far from each other as I understand it, in Japan. Kirishima and Sakurajima are two of the exploding kind, while Kilauea in Hawaii is one of the non-exploding kind (that's a very unscientific explanation - right? ha ha. At this time Kilauea just kind of urps lava up out of it's cone, down the side and out into the Pacific, quietly destroying subdivisions and whatever else that stands in the way. (The National Park Service website explains it much better than I want to go into right now. :-) )

Erik Klemetti has a post where he lists all of the volcano webcams, along with their web addresses. Plus he, and the people who comment on his posts, have listed a lot of YouTube video links. I find it all very, very interesting. :-)

Here is a photo from one of the eruptions this evening:

The video that goes with this is amazing. The "atom bomb" look is toward the end. There are other videos that show the shock wave associated with one of the eruptions at Sakurajima yesterday. Wow! Explosive Eruptions And Shock Waves At Sakurajima Volcano, Japan Raw Footage 桜島火山 . I would post the actual YouTube video but it's wider than my post area and I'm afraid it might cause problems with the sidebar. Hopefully you can just click on the link and go to the YouTube page if you'd like to see it.

Erik Klemetti also gives little updates on what some of the other active volcanoes are doing, as do people in the comments section.

Very interesting stuff. Maybe if it was earlier in the evening I would write about it all more intelligently. For now, though, it's heading toward midnight and bed time and dreams of earthquakes and volcanoes and other assorted exciting things.

I think I need a ticket to Japan.

Anak Krakatoa

The article, Will Krakatoa Rock The World Again?, in the Daily Mail (Great Britain) has some incredibly beautiful photos of Anak Krakatoa. I highly recommend viewing them just for the beauty the photographer, Marco Fulle, captured.

Once again I am amazed at the beauty of the world God created for us. Once again I am also amazed at how often that beauty is violent and dangerous.

My son, Andrew, has been interested in Krakatoa and Anak Krakatoa since grade school. We even bought him a book just on the explosion of 1883 once for Christmas.

As some people have commented at the end of the article - I don't know why the Religion of Climate Change (global warming) thinks man is doing so much damage. One "little" pop from this volcano would - no, WILL spew more CO2 into the atmosphere than man can put there for many dozens of years. Actually, I do know why the Climate Change Religion thinks this way - control, fear, hatred of mankind, hatred of God. But that is a whole 'nother post some time.

Beautiful Photos Today

Here are some beautiful photos from webcams on the internet, all from today (this morning in the States, this early evening here in Ukraine).

First - Glacier National Park

The Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) Cam is online!
This webcam is located on the east side of the St. Mary Visitor Center and points directly at an Osprey nest on the other side of the parking lot. Several years ago Glacier Electric Cooperative constructed the platform, in an effort to keep the birds from building nests on the power transformers on the adjacent power poles. The birds seem to have taken to the new location and have had successful nests for several seasons. We are hoping that this year they will once again have chicks in the nest soon.

Due to the high winds at St. Mary the image may be blurred from time to time as the camera vibrates in the housing. Wait for another image to download and it should be clearer.

Next - Mount Redoubt, Alaska

And last, but not least, Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the Wet Mountain Valley

Volcano Musings

Last week an undersea volcano near Tonga erupted spectacularly on my birthday. Wonderful pictures at Undersea volcano erupts off Tonga coast, including this one:

Today I read that the alert on Mount Redoubt in Alaska is at red (RED: Eruption is imminent with significant emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere likely OR eruption is underway or suspected with significant emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere [ash-plume height specified, if possible].) And on the same web page (Alaska Volcano Observatory), I find this photo, taken on my birthday:What a beautiful, beautiful mountain! We are so blessed to live on an earth that is beautiful.
Here is a current readout of the webicorder, just look at all that recent activity. Cool! (or maybe the correct word should be HOT!)
Last night at our team worship time it was commented and wondered at whether there will be mountains and canyons on the New Earth. Mel mentioned that some theologians think those two geographic features are a direct result of sin and the flood and thus will not be on the New Earth. I say: what a sad, pathetic thought. Not Mel's thoughts! but those who look at these things and see only the result of sin. To think that God's perfectly created earth, made just for us, would be smooth as a new cue ball with no high and low features - how very, very sad. I find it equally sad to think that the New Earth and/or New Heaven will be only a city. Ei yi yi!

I look at creation and see the work of God. I see a tiny manifestation of the power of God. And as I've written before, an example of His creativity and beauty. I think God gave us these kinds of things to be a reminder of how great He is and how little we really are. We may be the pinnacle of creation, as I've heard mankind referred to, but we are only a created being on a world created for us. In some ways, seeing the beauty and power of a volcano brings mankind 'back down to size' and brings glory and honor to the Creator of the universe instead. We are not God.

Mankind does such amazing things now - the ISS (International Space Station) is one example, the Mars rovers are another, and the hydrogen bomb and all the other bombs that have followed are even more examples. Yes, mankind can do great things. But can we make the earth quake at a 7.6 as just happened near Tonga? Or can we cause an undersea volcano to erupt? Or cause a series of tornados to devastate a wide area of the American mid-West? No - these things are not in our power. (And I pray they never are!) God can cause them to happen - and He does!

He is still God, and we will continue to remain merely created beings.
How very, very thankful I am for that!