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First Serious Injury Reported From Hawaiian Volcano Eruption

It surprised me that people are hanging out close enough to the volcano to get hit with a splat of “lava splatter”. Reverence for Pele aside, I suspect I might have vacated earlier.

‘According to the spokeswoman, a homeowner was on a third-floor balcony when he  was hit in the leg by a piece of lava spatter, shattering the limb from his shin to his foot. 

Lava spatter can “weigh as much as a refrigerator and even small pieces of spatter can kill,” Snyder added.’

And, I learned a new term: ‘laze’ (lava+haze):

“The Hawaiian Civil Defense Agency issued warnings for laze, which are clouds of hydrochloric acid laced with fine glass particles that are formed when the lava hits the ocean water. Laze can damage lungs, eyes, and skin.”

hydrochloric acid and glass particles….

When Dan and I lived in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in the early 1990s, we resided on the top floor of a firetrap building near Love River (a poetic name but there were turds floating in it). The housing was provided by Jordan’s Language School, the “bushiban” (private school) for which we were working.

The apartment came with a TV, a VCR, and a single video tape–Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which I remember seeing… more than a few (hundred) times! No surprise then that The Wall is imprinted quite indelibly in my consciousness. When I was teaching high school English in California, I had not forgotten being in high school myself, nor had I forgotten the lines from Pink Floyd’s The Wall: “Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone!”

Shout-out to B. Sadie in Washington!

Ronald Reagan: “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!”

Donald T-Rump, 2016: “We`re going to build a wall, folks. We`re going to build a wall. That wall will go up so fast, your head will spin”.