Recovering From the Cruelest Month

APRIL IS THE CRUELEST MONTH, asserted T.S. Eliot in his epic iconic poem "The Wasteland". I humbly nominate may, in the american midwest, the month of tornados. The good people of joplin, missouri "celebrate", if you can call it that, the second anniversary of tornadic cruelty today.

Those of us who survived barely survived, and should indeed celebrate, quietly. I was jogging in the monstrous tornados's soon to be path when the sky turned black and bumpy, and the sirens of despair sounded.

Never again will I ignore storm warning sirens; it almost cost me my life. In fact I payed great heed to them yesterday, when they announced another tornado's imminence to my tiny northwest arkansas town.  In a tornado, a basement beats a jogging trail.

After the destruction of most of joplin, nearly a quarter million beautiful americans, including president obama, came to help. A great deal of rebirth can occur in a mere two years, and joplin is reinventing itself with amazing rapidity. I recall standing amid the ubiquitous rubble, convinced there could be no recovery, that my hometown would never rise again. but it has, and happily i eat my previous words of despair.

By now it should be obvious to everyone that the annual mid american tornadic onslaught is likely to resume every may unto the unknown future. Basketball star kevin durant contributed a million dollars to a ssist in recovery from our latest, but surely not our last, version of yet another climate change debate stopper, in oklahoma.

Billions more are needed, and trillions will be needed for future cruel days of may recoveries. An american aircraft carrier costs about a million dollars a day to operate. By reducing our armada from the current thirteen flat tops to, say, ten, we could save a cool billion a year for reinvestment in future tornado recovery. We'll need every penny of it.

A ten ship nuclear carrier armada would surely be sufficient to maintain america's vast emperial supremacy, and the savings generated by operating three fewer of the behemoths would help rebuild a few houses and schools in the bargain.

And, as a concession to our big military small government conservative colleagues, we could keep in service the magnificent warship commisioned most recently, and christened the "ronald reagan".