How can I write with any seriousness about nature for two or three readers when centingenarians are blowing themselves up on idling buses in record-breaking traffic jams to escape the inevitable sea-borne storms of September? Rather than dying unattached to oxygen tanks that keep them alive well past their due date, rather than dying with the wind and the rain that come along as part of a cycle of the seasons, these children who became seniors so suddenly can only cling to their lives. I guess they can't help it. Humans are attached to themselves and to each other, to living forever, no matter how. This instinct may be due to an assembly of atoms, perhaps an ancillary to one of Newton's laws my mom recalled on the phone: "Objects in motion tend to stay in motion." If we are so used to living, how can we accept a cessation of that motion? It is natural to die, but everything living struggles to survive at all costs. In fact only man seems to have the capacity to move beyond this obsession, but acceptance takes its time. Sometimes we never get to that point. If anything, Hurricane Rita can teach us to take a deep breath and know that if we choose to live, we ultimately choose to die. Deciding how --if not when-- is the question.