The Flood of Biblical Proportions

It’s hard to watch the coverage of Hurricane Harvey without feeling a heavy heart and sympathy for the people in Texas and Louisiana. I’ve had it on from morning to night since it started a week ago. I could give myself more breaks, turn off the TV, but that’s hard to do when people in Houston and the other effected areas are still in serious peril due to the catastrophic flooding. I’ve run into some cynics on political debate sites this week who think they are too smart to be caught in situations where their lives depend on the goodness of strangers and the professionalism of first responders. They are critical of everyone from the Harvey victims, the local officials, the building codes even the media but I take comfort in the fact that the cynics aren't winning any popularity contests. I also take comfort in the fact that the Good Samaritans far outnumber the handful of looters in situations like these flood victims are going through. As Chris Cuomo from CNN says, “Disasters bring out the bad in bad people and the good in good people.”

So many heroic stories are coming out of this disaster that it reinforces your faith in the goodness of mankind. People like “Mattress Mack” in Houston who opened up his two furniture stores and warehouses to shelter evacuees---his beds, sofas and chairs helping 300+ people at each location. And the restaurants inside his stores and near-by are cooking meals for them. People like the 29 year old screenwriter with no training who took charge in a small shelter in a desperate situation in Rockport. He organized volunteers to plug leaks, pool food and water and forage the building for things they could use like hand sanitizers plus look after the frailest people in the group of 125 people. Heroic people like those with water crafts of all kinds who came in from every which way to help evaluate people who’d been stranded in houses with water filling up the first floors or wading in knee-to-waist-high water. And the people like those who organized conveys headed to the disaster areas with water, food, clothing and other necessities and to work on restoring the power lines. The enormity of the on-going needs of the flood and hurricane victims is hard to wrap your head around. And it's not just Texas. Other states also felt the wrath of Harvey. 

The Domino Effect: It comes with no surprise they are now saying gasoline will be in short supply for the North East due to the largest oil refinery in the nation (at Port Arthur, Texas) being off line and it will take a week or two to get it up and running again. Already gas prices here have jumped up and you know building supplies will be in severe, short supply down the road. Beef prices will also sky-rocket. Louisiana has taken 3,000 Texans into their shelters and Sunday our local Noel Project is expecting 100 stray dogs from Houston that are being moved from their humane society to make room for temporary housing for dogs with known owners staying in evacuation shelters. I live near a FEMA trailer storage yard and I’m guessing I’ll see them moving out next week. And the process of reaching an agreement on how to pay for the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history begins when our lawmakers get back to D.C. next week. By the time the Domino Effect plays out it will go far and wide, in tiny and large ways.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as of Friday says that 400,400 people have registered for assistance and The Red Cross says it has 258 shelters set up, having moved 400 of their trucks and 1,500 volunteers down to the area with more volunteers being trained for down the road. I’ve lost track of the counties now included in the Federal Disaster Declaration but FEMA is estimating that185,000 private homes were damaged, not to mention the infrastructure that will need replacing. So far FEMA seems to be doing a good job, having learned from the mistakes made with hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. And every branch of our military has been deployed to help including Black Hawk helicopters usually deployed in war zones. Then there are the celebrities who are challenging one another to match their donations to disaster relief organizations, throwing around numbers as high a million each. Their challenge chain keeps growing. I could go on and on about all the heroic, positive and uplifting stories and acts of kindness that catastrophic Hurricane Harvey has inspired, but I’d rather document Harvey with some of the more iconic photos I’ve seen this week. ©

volunteers coming to help

Houston FEMA Shelter

cattle drive to higher ground

dog evacuating himself and his bag of food

One Week in the Life of a Water Logged Widow

SUNDAY: I couldn’t have gotten through last Sunday (or the rest of the week) without my handy Crocs rubbers. My basement was covered with three inches of water----every square in of it---and that’s how I know that Mother Nature has a sense of humor. She decided if I was going to bellyache about feeling guilty over my good fortunes in life (see my April 24th post) then she’d give me something to cry about. The sump pump that I often wondered what it did in the basement besides scare the bejesus out of me out failed while trying to keep up with the 100 year flood and record rain falls in my township. The guys who came today to pump the basement out couldn’t keep up with the water coming in from the broken sump pump so they packed up their hoses and left me standing in the water saying they’d be back at 8:00 AM Tuesday, assuming I could arrange for a plumber to install a new sump pump by then.

MONDAY: I woke up at the crack of dawn, so I could get a hold of the plumbing service where I left an S.O.S. late yesterday. Their White-Knight-to-the-Rescue showed up at 2:00 PM and left an hour later after handing me a bill for $275. The rest of the afternoon I spent behind a push broom, creating a series of mini wakes in an attempt to help the water find the new sump pump.

TUESDAY: I was back in the Crocs rubbers this morning so I could alternate between watching the water extraction guys work in the basement and worrying that it wasn’t going as fast as I wished. After four hours of sucking up the standing water, they placed industrial fans and a refrigerator-sized heater/dehumidifier in the basement and together they sound like I have a couple of jet airplanes warming up down there. (I don't even want to think about what this will do to my electric bill.) Then the crew made a series of appointments with me before leaving, for them to move their equipment around each day. I guess you could say they’re my new best friends. After they left, an old friend who owes a clean up service came over to help me get the worst of the wet and ruined stuff out of the basement.

WEDNESDAY: It was back in my Crocs rubbers to work in the basement where the Mold Prevention Patrol showed up to do a treatment. So far this little flood zone has cost me roughly $3,500 and the bills aren't all in yet. The landscape guy was here today, too. He added a 50 foot temporary drain extension at the end of my sump pump pipe to drain the water farther away from the house and my soggy yard. Now, my house can correctly be described as the one with a river running towards the storm drain. When I wasn’t downstairs I was hauling stuff to the deck in an attempt to dry it out in the sun.

THURSDAY: The ‘fans and giant dryer’ guys came back in the morning to move their equipment round down in the basement. This afternoon I was able to breath easier and go on a tour I’d signed up for weeks ago through the senior center. It was to the 911 dispatch center that handles all the 911 calls for 4-5 counties. It was an interesting tour but it brought some unexpected bad memories to the surface of times when I had to call 911 for Don. At one point those old “flee” or “cry in place” widow feelings washed over me, but I toughed it out and did neither one.

FRIDAY: When I wasn’t working in the basement I was thinking about the damage down there. My basement wasn’t a finished basement so my flooding could have been far worse. There are people in town who still can't live in their houses due to water damage---several weeks after the river crested---and other people in high rises who just this week were given permission to take their insurance adjusters in to see their water logged cars that were in the underground parking area. Due to electrical issues those people living in high rises still can't move back home again either. The most important things I lost---at least to me---was an old leather suitcase full of Valentines from the 1800s and my artwork dating back to my college years and after---four decades worth of folders full of drawings, etchings, lithographs and painted canvases. I’m telling myself that losing the artwork can be a blessing in disguise, a gift from Mother Nature. When I get around to taking up art again---which is on my Bucket List---I won’t have to compete with the talent of my youth. I can start fresh with no expectations or mourning over skills I might have lost in recent years.

SATURDAY: I got a break from the flood zone and went to an outdoors wedding in the country.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and I was so happy the couple didn't get the 40% chance of rain that was in the forecast. The reception was inside a near-by barn and it was a fun way to end an exhausting week. As often as I saw the water extraction crew this week, though, I should have asked the crew leader to be my date for the wedding. (He really liked the 'art studio' I set up in the basement and if there hadn't been a forty year age gap between us, I would have called it flirting.) Oh, well, I’ll see him and his crew on Monday, I hope for the very last time because that will mean the "jet planes" are no longer needed in the basement.  I want to get my basement put back together again and to put all this behind me over the next week or two!! ©

World Events, Widows and Finding Oneself

Florida Porches by Raymond Cloutier

Four days after the Boston Marathon bombings I went to a bridal shower and was surprised at how many women there hadn’t heard about it yet---about a third of those in attendance. With the injured people numbering over two hundred and three people dead how can people in this age of social media and wall-to-wall TV coverage not hear about an event that big?  I don’t suppose they know about the Texas fertilizer factory explosion, either, that happened close on its heels that injured over two hundred and killed fourteen. And now, the disaster in the Bangladesh where a garment factory collapsed and the death toll has climbed to over 300 as they pull more victims and dead bodies out of the rubble. So much pain, so much heartache and so much healing will need to come forth before life can return to normal for all the lives affected by these tragedies. I don’t know whether to envy or scuff at people who don’t stay tuned into what is going on in the world. I feel overwhelmed by current events right now---restless and impotent and with those feelings is a growing anger. Anger that I don’t know where to aim. Life seems so much more complicated than it was a few short weeks ago.

Over the past thirty-forty years when ever I’ve felt this way I’d find myself daydreaming about being in the Federal Witness Protection Program. I’ve always been a sucker for books that use this scenario for a plot device. Pacifiers for adults I call them. I can daydream myself being placed on an Amish farm in Pennsylvania or in a cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. My imaginary life in the FWPP would separate me from mainstream civilization but with my own private guardian angel to keep me safe. I suppose turning off CNN, internet news sources and social media is another, more practical way I could accomplish the same thing, to escape the overload of information coming at me. It’s something I instinctively did in the months following Don’s death. Handling my own grief was enough and the world had to wait. If I’d gone to a bridal shower back then, I would have been counted in the Clueless Club if something major was going on in the world. Sometimes we’re the Yin and sometimes we’re the Yang.

These past few weeks I’ve been reading and am half way through a non-fiction book about a political activist who left New York City to stay alone in a cabin on an island off the coast of Maine. She had no phone service, no electricity or inside plumbing and she learned to eat off the land and the water. I keep thinking to myself, Could I ever actually do that? Be a hermit, be a recluse? And then I remember all the times since Don died that I’ve felt like a bird in a gilded cage with no one to hear my morning songs. You don’t have to be totally isolated from society to feel isolated. But the thing is, the author of the book didn’t feel isolated and alone. She was finding herself in the simplicity of living close to nature, finding  oneness with the world. Maybe my infatuation with the Federal Witness Protect Program is more about running away than running to something like Ms. Shulman did in Drinking The Rain.  I've often thought I feel too connected with the world...but isn't that just right brain, left-handed liberal non-sense? How can you be too connected to the suffering of mankind?

Today was the first time this spring it was warm and dry enough to sit outside and I welcomed hearing the birds chirping. For a brief moment I entertained the idea of planting a garden so I could spend more time outside listening to the birds. Then I decided that what I really need to do is to learn NOT to multitask. If I want to listen to the birds I shouldn’t have tend garden to justify being outside. Life is too short and unpredictable. As a septuagenarian I need to start pondering age-old questions like: Why does it take adversity to bring out the goodness in people? Why can’t we skip the bombings, the fires and the buildings collapsing and go straight to the part where people step up to show extraordinary kindness to others? Sometimes the contrary forces that govern the world suck! I want the light without the darkness, the highs without the lows, the love without the hate and life without death. Since I can't have any of that I want a porch overlooking an ocean where I can come to terms with the fact that disasters and evil are as much a part of the Natural World as the sun rising and setting. Utopia is just a fictional island we can only dream of seeing through the mist or on an artist's canvas or read about in a book.  ©

Contrasts, Bag Ladies and Floods

our main street downtown

 
Yesterday I had to go to a part of town clustered around our former industrial base. I say ‘former’ because in recent years that industrial base has dried up or moved on to other cities. It’s a depressed and rundown area from what it was just five years ago. One thing that struck me was the billboards I saw advertising phone numbers where people can get help for drug or alcohol abuse, child abuse and neighborhood watch groups. We don’t see those on the other end of town where I live.

On one corner where I had to wait for a traffic light a woman about my age was sitting in a wheelchair holding a sign that read: “Need help and money for food.” Was she for real? A dozen questions went through my head as I waited for the light to change including why would she sit on a busy corner where there was no place a driver could pull over and park if she/he wanted to give the woman some cash. It wasn’t likely she’d spring up from the chair and walk over to a car to collect the money. Would she? She was old enough for Social Security, Medicare, subsidized housing and many other safety nets our community provides to needy people. Why would a person her age need to sit on a corner holding up a sign begging for money? Perhaps she wasn’t mentally capable of navigating her way through Social Services. Perhaps her grandchildren were using her to get money for drugs. I wish I’d had a sign I could have held up that read: “Call 211 for help!”

Whatever the woman’s back story, she was the personification of every fear I had during my younger years, of what my old age would look like if I didn’t play my cards right. Don and I both were both children of depression era parents who’d gone through a lot of tough times in their lives. It was in our DNA to believe that bad luck and hard times could be just around any corner. Consequently, we were workaholics most of our adult lives. Fast forward decades later and I didn’t turn into a bag lady and unless the whole world falls apart, I most likely won’t ever be one. Still, the woman sitting on the corner bothered me---the contrast between her life and mine. In the stroke support community I was a part of for twelve years I’d met a lot of people who thought their futures were secure but they watched it all slip through their fingers when their medical problems and lack of insurance caused them to go bankrupt. Sometimes people get beaten down through no fault of their own.

I drove back to my end of town taking a broad boulevard that makes its way past two well groomed college campuses, several upscale malls and a large botanical garden. I was driving a paid-for car that had just gotten its first anniversary “buff and shine”---warranty required for its clear coat---and I was feeling guilty because by the grace of God or good fortune or the forces of the universe I wasn’t the one sitting on the corner holding up a cardboard sign begging for money. Whether it was a scam, or not, she was still a woman who’d lost all dignity and pride. And that’s sad.

Oh cripe! I just thought about something else to feel guilty and sad about. We’re in the middle of dealing with a 100 year flood with the river that runs through town and record rain fall. I wonder if anyone helped all those homeless people evacuate who live under the bridges and viaducts. Where did they go, who took them in? The lower levels of dozens of buildings downtown are flooded including a five star hotel, the museums, and high-rise apartment buildings. Homes along the river near-by where I live look like little islands and the evacuation of a nursing home was well covered in the news. But my storm damaged yard was put back to normal with a phone call to my landscaper. My biggest flood related problem has been trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B because of road closures. More contrasts. More good luck versus bad luck. I might be alone in the world. I might be a lonely widow. But I’m one lucky, alone and lonely widow. And I hope I never forget to count my blessings as well as the tears. ©

2-3 miles from where I live