Thoughts on hurricanes and the king called Lionheart

I know all our hopes and prayers are with the people of Florida today. They do seem to have heeded the warnings of their governor and local officials and many, if not most, have evacuated, so that may keep the death toll from this monster storm down. As I have said before, we are so fortunate to get advance warnings of hurricanes. The most horrific example of a stealth storm is the one that destroyed Galveston in September of 1900, killing between six and ten thousand people. It is still possible for a hurricane to hit without warning; I was in one in England, of all places, in October of 1987. But thankfully, they are very rare.

Here is a story that brought tears to my eyes. A woman had gone to a Lowes storm, desperate to buy a generator for her elderly father, who needs oxygen to survive. She’d waited in line for hours, only to have the supplies run out just as it was her turn. She was weeping when a stranger tried to comfort her and when he learned why she was crying, he put the generator he’d just bought in her shopping cart, saying she needed it more than he did. A local reporter was on the scene, looking for hurricane stories, and they captured it on video. The woman was overwhelmed, calling him her angel. The next day Lowes received an unexpected generator and the manager remembered the Good Samaritan; the store contacted him and gave him the generator free of charge. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/i...

It feels like forever since I’ve posted about anything historic, so this is long overdue.
Yesterday was the birthdate 857 years ago, September 8th, 1157, of the most famous of the Devil’s Brood, Eleanor’s favorite son, Richard. I couldn’t resist posting from a scene in Time and Chance, a scene frozen in amber, in which Henry and Eleanor’s marriage was still whole and happy and they still thought the world was theirs for the taking.
Time and Chance, page 53
* * *
Somewhere along the way from the castle, Henry had found a garden to raid, for he was carrying an armful of Michaelmas daisies. These he handed to Petronilla, rather sheepishly, for romantic gestures did not come easily to him. Crossing the chamber in several strides, he leaned over the bed to give his wife a kiss. (omission)
“Are you hurting, love?”
Eleanor’s smile was tired, but happy. “Not at all,” she lied. “By now the babes just pop right out, like a cork from a bottle.”
Henry laughed. “Well….where is the little cork?”
A wet nurse came forward from the shadows, bobbing a shy curtsy before holding out a swaddled form for his inspection. Henry touched the ringlets of reddish-gold hair, the exact shade of his own, and grinned when the baby’s hand closed around his finger. “Look at the size of him,” he marveled, and as his eyes met Eleanor’s, the same thought was in both their minds: heartfelt relief that God had given them such a robust, sturdy son. No parent who’d lost a child could ever take health or survival for granted again.
“We still have not decided what to name him,” Henry reminded his wife. “I fancy Geoffrey, after my father.”
“The next one,” she promised. “I have a name already in mind for this little lad.”
He cocked a brow. “Need I remind you that it is unseemly to name a child after a former husband?”
Eleanor’s lashes were drooping and her smile turned into a sleepy yawn. “I would not name a stray dog after Louis,” she declared, holding out her arms for her new baby. She was surprised by the intensity of emotion she felt as she gazed down into that small, flushed face. Had God sent him to fill the aching void left by Will’s death? “I want,” she said, “to name him Richard.”
* * *