How many ways can you say Wow! OMG! Oh no, not again? Or, how many times can extreme expressions be expressed without ourselves becoming a bit jaded or inured to extremes? The tone of networked and cabled, live news coverage that can't seem to even report weather without sensationalized, emotive delivery of language. Do we eventually protect ourselves by becoming numb; or do we respond with craven watching in ever more addictive cycles?

Like nearly everyone else, yes, I do want to know about the hurricanes pounding our continent, how people are helping each other, how much destruction is happening, where it is happening, how the planning and responses are working out, what else can be done to help. That being said, I don't want information couched in pandering to human nature's baser idiom. There is a whole world of day-to-day news out there to report!  Television anchors emoting superlatives into a mic serve themselves. Joe Friday would have said, "Just the facts, Ma'am."

I was going to apologize for getting on my soap box but I changed my mind.

Keoni has kept in touch down there in Georgia. Some of you follow his Facebook postings and I keep a few of his pictures from there and his texts...

Hey, Keoni! Where'd you get the fancy camera?

Michael Chong, you'll remember from this summer's Dali Musicians.

Michael and Keoni back at Mercer.

Yes, music life is on hold there as classes are canceled today in preparation for Irma's onslaught. Even though diminished this morning from her fierce path of destruction along the western Florida coastline, Irma is still a very powerful storm heading into Georgia and Alabama. Keoni just now texted that the electricity went out.

I learned from son-in-law Tim Love that his Tampa nephew is OK and had evacuated.

From Marge who is with two of her sisters in Wyoming, I received this...

Yes, it is THE Old Faithful!!!

And, she sent this, too...

On my home front, I have continued wrapping up items needing attention after those many months last winter of necessary stay-at-home recovery and healing. The heavy-lifting on the items is pretty much done so I can whittle the rest down in small doses in the days ahead. Yay!

Fall has been changing Penn's Woods every day. The grasses in the fields are high now. The man who bales up Joe's hay that Wendy usually purchases, had his baler break down during the baling, so the field of hay then got soaked in the downpours we've been having.

Nice to go on my walks.

And I enjoy the late light out the back of Marge's yard.