OPINION: Dodos and desperados

Other coastal communities are taking a different path, building further back from the shore and putting in sand-dune systems to hold back the monster high tides. Long Beach, NY, had a chance to participate in a dune-building project six years ago, with the help of the Army Corps of Engineers, but the citizens turned it down because it would have cost them $7 million and the dunes might have blocked the view from the boardwalk. Now the “view” is of hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, and the boardwalk is gone — so badly damaged that it had to be demolished. Meanwhile, the two neighboring towns that ponied-up and participated were spared the worst of the hurricane’s destruction.

In another ironic twist, desperados sniffing potential profit in all the coastal rubble are arriving cash-in-hand to buy up, rebuild, and re-sell the ruined waterfront houses — so much so that they are pushing seaside property costs higher in some places than they were before Hurricane Sandy came along. If they succeed, they’ll be geniuses; if another mega-storm hits before they make their money back, they’ll be among history’s dodos — birds who became extinct when they lost their ability to fly, and could no longer escape from peril.

Comedian Jackie Mason had an act back in the 1980s called “The World According to Me,” which included a funny bit about the way we Americans keep rebuilding in the path of destruction, as if it were somehow noble to shake a defiant fist at the sky, like Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind.” But behind the humor, as is often true with comedy, there is frustration, anger, even tragedy.

I keep waiting for us to step up to the plate, as a country, and do something great: make a national decision to save our shoreline, say. That would be timely. Or build a national network of high-speed rail lines. Something on the scale of the Interstate Highway system. Wake up Congress, maybe, and get it to put in more than two days a week at the office. Remind it that it’s supposed to be working. For us.

One thing about the dodos: they lost their ability to fly because their existence wasn’t challenged by predators. For centuries they had an island all to themselves, and with nothing to flee from, they lost the knack of flying.

We, on the other hand, have plenty of challenges these days. We probably should be rising to them, just to stay in practice.

Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers with the Commerce Public Library and the Jackson County Literacy Program.