Closing In

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In the East wall our three french doors are framed in wood forms and you can see what will be the pillars of our gallery, or front porch, now just rusted skeletal reinforcing bar entities, as yet unformed, unpoured but somewhat defined elements.

In the distance, through the opening for the second french door, you can see Christiansted through the haze. The haze on this day is caused from two separate incidents, one happening southeast of here, in Montserrat, in the form of an active volcano, spewing ash into the sky (some 10 to 15, 000 feet altitude); the other about 3,500 miles to the east, in Africa, the winds of the desert are sending the dust skyward as well. On a clear day we can see forty to forty five miles to the horizon and other nearby Islands, with the ash and dust? Two miles, sometimes less.

A study of the dust that is transported from Africa to the Caribbean Basin, with some micron-sized bits carried in the Jet Stream at extremely high altitudes, is ongoing. Once thought to be sterilized by the extreme heat of the desert, they are now discovering that these once innocuous specks may carry disease and carcinogins in the form of microbes, pesticides, crop-enhancing fertilizers and other chemical wastes that may hitchhike along with the finest of the particles. So much for clean Caribbean breezes, is anyplace free of these poisonous pollutants?

There is an upside to the dust and the severity, or not, of the airborne dust storms or particle deposits on our shores. The dust may help protect us from the formation of tropical depressions, storms and Hurricanes, because they adhere to water molecules in the atmosphere that they pass through, slowing the uptake of large amounts of sea water, which normally feed the storms fury themselves as they gather strength coming across the Atlantic Ocean. This, it is believed, is why the most recent of Hurricanes, which caused unprecedented damage in coastal and inland regions of Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Missippi and Texas, as was the case last summer and fall, are forming much further to the west thqatn normal.