Opposites

In the Saturday mailbox, a reminder …

… of the processes of The Watercourse: Change is the only permanence:

139 years ago today in 1883, the Indonesian island of Krakatau exploded after its volcano erupted. After several days of rumblings and increasing ash eruption, a cataclysmic explosion sent ash 50 miles into the air, produced atmospheric pressure waves that were recorded around the globe for almost five days, and triggered tsunamis that reached over 100 ft. high that killed nearly 40,000 people. The explosion was so loud that it was heard in Perth, Australia, 2,200 miles away, and it rocked buildings 500 miles away—estimated louder than the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast. Weather patterns were disrupted for years. In 1927, a new series of eruptions formed a new island, which is called Anak Krakatau, the Child of Krakatau.

Sixteen years after Krakatau, C.S. Forester was born in Cairo (1899). He created the character Captain Hornblower, as well as authoring The African Queen – about love on a boat, among other matters – which was made into a truly excellent movie in 1951 by John Huston, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

"Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights." – Georg Hegel, whose birthday was 252 years ago today in Stuttgart, before Germany became Germany.