Lava

I watch the evening news (and the morning news and the noon news and the late news) because I love the human parade. I love to read history and biographies, and the news, as someone at the Washington POST said, is "...only the first rough draft of history."

I mean, we see things on the news that are momentous around the globe, and stories just as touching that affect only the residents of a certain neighborhood.

F'rinstance, we have seen tornados strike this summer. No one who saw the news from Mullica Hill, New Jersey this summer will forget how some houses were just torn to smithereens...and often, the house next door lost one shingle. Life and death can be just so random. 

Across the sea in La Palma, one of the Spanish Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, the sky is lit up with smoldering lava as a volcano spews for the first time in 50 years. The lava has covered 2,000 acres of land, destroyed 2,000 businesses and homes, and wiped out many of the banana plantations, just since September 19...and there is no end in sight. People - 6,000 of them - are displaced and fearful, naturally.

And in all this, one small house has been left alone.  Locals are calling it "the miracle house."

Somehow the small chalet, owned by Danish couple Inge and Rainer Cocq, stands. The Cocqs have not traveled to their vacation home since the COVID-19 pandemic began (they take these things seriously in other parts of the world).

A friend of the couple says, "They came several times a year, until the virus arrived." 

Locals say the Cocqs chose La Palma for its spectacular volcanic landscape.

Ironies abound. We are reminded every day to enjoy what we have while we have it.