Counting blessings & being grateful

I live in a metropolitan area whose climate is far more temperate than many outsiders think: our winters are more than managable as we are not often buried in snow or sub-zero temperatures. Our summers are often comfortable, as we remind ourselves after having gone through one that was anything but. I'm fortunate to live in a place where often the worst part of the climate is the exageration outsiders give to it. I live in a city, an area, not subject to the devastation of hurricanes. I don't have to look at the path of a developing south Atlantic storm and wonder if it is bringing devasation my way. I don't have to live with the thought of boarding up my house nor the ordeal of of abandoning my home for a long trek inland. And while this may be a temporary privilege, I don't have to think about how global warming affects my shoreline and turns it into a permananet battle zone between land and sea. I don't have the fear of what a major earthquake could do to my city the way that Angelenos and San Franciscans do. Nor the mudslides and torrential rains that can wash houses down hills and bury communities the way they can along the Calif coast. Or the other extreme, drought, which also affects the region. My air, far from perfect, is not subject to the inversions that trap pollutants and create the smog of LA and Denver. I don't bake through 100 degree plus summer days (endless days so often) in Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, and Houston. Nor do I face the serious water problems that often accompanies western heat. The constant summer heat and humidity of Orlando, Houston, New Orleans are not part of my experiences. I do not live in a sauna. On the other end of the spectrum, the lake effect snow that often buries Buffalo and treats Cleveland unkindly misses my city, an advantage of being on the western shore of a Great Lake. I avoid much of the humidity of a summer in St. Louis, Cinicinnati, and Washington, DC, not only because I'm not in their river valley location, but because of the moderating effect of Lake Michigan on my climate. And while I am subject to an occassional (and so rare) tornado, those have done mostly localized damage and far less dangerous, frequent, and devasatating as the ones that occur out on the Great Plains. So while I share with others here in our compassion and care and concern over New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, I am also aware of how fortunate I am to live on a piece of land far more blessed by the forces of nature than we often realize. I am most fortunate.>