journal features

typhoon!

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Miyazaki, 2007.07.14

Today we endured the full blast of a tropical typhoon. It was so bad that we had to armour the house to protect the windows.

But then suddenly the eye was upon us, and it was really something. The sky was mostly clear, but there were surprising little tufts of cloud that would pop out of nowhere at an elevation of maybe 250m and run a jagged course above us. I took a lot of photos of the neighbourhood during all of that.

The house -- it belonged to Mari's grandparents, and now her sister and her family live there -- was mostly intact, except for some minor damage. But everything in the farms around us short of full-grown corn was flattened.

The tail half of the typhoon was much less severe, with constant steady rain in winds that were strong but nothing out of the ordinary.

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.