Last week, my friend and colleague, QD editor in chief Dirk Dusharme, wrote an uplifting and important column in this space. Titled “The Day We All Looked for the Same Thing,” Dirk’s article used last week’s solar eclipse, seen in its totality in so many places around the United States, as a motif to express the insight, and hope, that there are more things pulling us together than tearing us apart.

This is not that column, although it shares as a point of departure millions of people scanning the skies for something that none of them had likely seen in their lifetimes. Dirk spoke of the natural wonder of an eclipse; I’m speaking, of course, of the natural disaster of Hurricane Harvey, a storm of biblical proportions that can be said to have ushered in a rain of error.

 …