I’m driving around in a new (used) car – a silver cream puff that I bought from CarMax.  It’s a Hyundai Elantra.  (Hyundai is approximately pronounced with the first syllable rhyming with June and the second syllable like the English word day. The word means “modernity” in Korean.)

It replaced my previous car – a noble Accord coupe stricken when the bayou across the street overflowed its banks during Hurricane Harvey’s visit to Houston.

Harvey’s intensity was in part due to the climate disruption brought about by humankind’s profligate consumption of energy, so say the scientists. One of the most significant sources of the atmospheric carbon dioxide is our collective use of automobiles.

So with cars as it is with people and ideas, my old car played a role, however small, in engendering its own destruction—and rebirth.