The sunlight shines on darkness
Us: Still here
It: Long gone
Monday dawned bright and beautiful here on the Western Edge, but what the light revealed was nothing but.
We live in a semi-affluent subdivision on high ground, not terribly far from the Alafia River. Less than one mile away from my house, across the street from my children's school, is a slightly different world. Battered mailboxes stand at the top of long gravel driveways, which lead through groves of tall oak and cypress trees down to several erratically placed mobile homes. Under normal circumstances, you can't see these trailers for the trees, which is the way these folks want iit, and I'm sure it's exactly the way the damn homeowner's association in my neighborhood would want it.
Frances peeled back the cover on this alcove. The Alafia went over its banks this morning, and took a lot of those trees and most of those homes with it.
At 7:30 this morning, as I was driving to work, I saw a couple of 50-ish men, shirtless, scratching their chins. They didn't seem to be talking to each other; they were just looking down the driveway at what was once theirs. Too stunned to get pissed, powerless to do anything about it. A woman, near tears, sloshed through the ditch to come talk to these men. News crews were parked on the side of the main road, amid the Granadas and Skylarks and late-'70s Chevy trucks, $500 heaps that these folks had desperately moved to higher ground before the river took them, too.
As the traffic inched by, partly because of the water crossing the road and partly because we were gawking, while the newspeople, raincoated (for no reason) and coiffed, pointed and filmed and talked, I saw a woman in a tank top and shorts struggle to light a cigarette in the breeze. She finally got her smoke lit, and, frustrated, threw the lighter into a puddle, probably without thinking at that moment that she's not going to be able to reach into the cabinet above her refrigerator and get another one.
We have everything and didn't lose any of it. They have little and just lost what they had. I'm not apologizing for our good fortune, but something about it just doesn't seem fair.
The Red Cross takes donations online or over the phone at 1-800-HELP-NOW.
These folks don't really need your old clothes or bottles of water or non-perishables or teddy bears. They need money. Those people across the street need it, and people down in Charlotte and Desoto and Hardee and Polk counties still need it from the damage Charley did.
---
Back at the last storm, I ragged a little bit on the local media. Having been dealt only a glancing blow from Charley, we thought that they might have overdone it a little bit.
But man, they came through on Frances, and then some.
We didn't miss a day of the Tampa Tribune. The local television stations were on the air for more than 60 hours, keeping us updated on what was going on elsewhere while all we could see was our backyard. The forecasts were frighteningly accurate, and the pictures were stunning.
You could tell the TV folks were getting a little bit ragged by last night. They certainly could be excused for that; they basically gave them enough time to change their clothes and their makeup before trotting them back out to the desk. They got a little break for regular programming Monday nght before going on at 11, and by then, it was obvious that the producer was saying one thing and the anchor was hearing, "mhjtib atj;i34l dfgkldf."
My folded-up newspaper hat is off to them. They did a hell of a job.
Now if only they could find a way to get their Super Double Pinpoint Neighborhood Master Blaster Doppler to steer Ivan into open water ...
It: Long gone
Monday dawned bright and beautiful here on the Western Edge, but what the light revealed was nothing but.
We live in a semi-affluent subdivision on high ground, not terribly far from the Alafia River. Less than one mile away from my house, across the street from my children's school, is a slightly different world. Battered mailboxes stand at the top of long gravel driveways, which lead through groves of tall oak and cypress trees down to several erratically placed mobile homes. Under normal circumstances, you can't see these trailers for the trees, which is the way these folks want iit, and I'm sure it's exactly the way the damn homeowner's association in my neighborhood would want it.
Frances peeled back the cover on this alcove. The Alafia went over its banks this morning, and took a lot of those trees and most of those homes with it.
At 7:30 this morning, as I was driving to work, I saw a couple of 50-ish men, shirtless, scratching their chins. They didn't seem to be talking to each other; they were just looking down the driveway at what was once theirs. Too stunned to get pissed, powerless to do anything about it. A woman, near tears, sloshed through the ditch to come talk to these men. News crews were parked on the side of the main road, amid the Granadas and Skylarks and late-'70s Chevy trucks, $500 heaps that these folks had desperately moved to higher ground before the river took them, too.
As the traffic inched by, partly because of the water crossing the road and partly because we were gawking, while the newspeople, raincoated (for no reason) and coiffed, pointed and filmed and talked, I saw a woman in a tank top and shorts struggle to light a cigarette in the breeze. She finally got her smoke lit, and, frustrated, threw the lighter into a puddle, probably without thinking at that moment that she's not going to be able to reach into the cabinet above her refrigerator and get another one.
We have everything and didn't lose any of it. They have little and just lost what they had. I'm not apologizing for our good fortune, but something about it just doesn't seem fair.
The Red Cross takes donations online or over the phone at 1-800-HELP-NOW.
These folks don't really need your old clothes or bottles of water or non-perishables or teddy bears. They need money. Those people across the street need it, and people down in Charlotte and Desoto and Hardee and Polk counties still need it from the damage Charley did.
---
Back at the last storm, I ragged a little bit on the local media. Having been dealt only a glancing blow from Charley, we thought that they might have overdone it a little bit.
But man, they came through on Frances, and then some.
We didn't miss a day of the Tampa Tribune. The local television stations were on the air for more than 60 hours, keeping us updated on what was going on elsewhere while all we could see was our backyard. The forecasts were frighteningly accurate, and the pictures were stunning.
You could tell the TV folks were getting a little bit ragged by last night. They certainly could be excused for that; they basically gave them enough time to change their clothes and their makeup before trotting them back out to the desk. They got a little break for regular programming Monday nght before going on at 11, and by then, it was obvious that the producer was saying one thing and the anchor was hearing, "mhjtib atj;i34l dfgkldf."
My folded-up newspaper hat is off to them. They did a hell of a job.
Now if only they could find a way to get their Super Double Pinpoint Neighborhood Master Blaster Doppler to steer Ivan into open water ...
posted by rj at 7:05 PM
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