Hurricane Fall-Out

September 14 is a bad date for hurricanes. On September 14, 2018, Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina. Ten years earlier, on September 14, 2008, the remnants of Hurricane Ike caused wide-spread flooding in Northwest Indiana and wrecked havoc on our own house.  

Last week I wrote about Hurricane Florence and how it was affecting my cousins. Since then I’ve learned that the ones in Wilmington are safe and should be close to normal soon. My Topsail Island cousin returned to a home still standing but significantly damaged. It will take her longer to get back to normal.

I know how that feels. Ten years ago, the remnants of Hurricane Ike took less than 24 hours to drop ten inches of rain on Northwest Indiana. The Little Calumet River overflowed its banks a few blocks from our house, and we fled north to stay on our sailboat at the Hammond Marina. It was a week before we could get to the house and two-and-a-half before we could move back home. Even then, we were reduced to living in half the house for several months while reconstructing the rest.

The water came up about five feet on the lower level of our tri-level home, practically destroying the laundry room, the second bathroom, and the family room. Our family room was lined with bookshelves, and Roland likes to joke that he filled a dumpster with the books he had to throw out. A heart-wrenching circumstance for booklovers. The water rose almost a foot in our office, the garage, and the rooms behind them that we had been using for storage. But the living room and kitchen were raised slightly and didn’t have any damage. Neither did the top floor with the bedrooms and the other bathroom. So we returned home as soon as the town cleared the house for habitation.

The first picture shows the rubbish piled along Jackson Avenue as people cleared out their homes. And that’s AFTER the dumpsters had been taken away. The next picture shows the stairs down to the lower level as we gutted the ruined parts of the house with help from church and other friends. I don’t know what we would have done without them.

We were very fortunate to have great friends and good flood insurance.

But I feel for everyone who has suffered from Hurricane Florence.

A Prayer

Less than two months ago I was on Topsail Island in North Carolina for a reunion with my paternal cousins. Roland and I stayed at a hotel, as did another cousin and her husband, but everyone else stayed with my cousin Gail. The photo shows her house as it looked on July 28.

Who knows what it looks like now.

Gail evacuated to her brother’s house in Richmond, Virginia, and officials aren’t letting residents back on the island yet, so we don’t have a damage report. On the positive side, the photos I’ve seen on Gail’s Facebook page seem to indicate that most of the houses on the island came through without major damage.

Then there are my two sets of Wilmington cousins. One couple was out of the country at the time, but the other was at home and didn’t evacuate. The last I heard they were safe but without power and low on cell phone battery.

So my blog post today is a simple prayer for all who have been affected by Hurricane Florence.

Dear Lord, thank you for your protection during Hurricane Florence and for your promise in Isaiah 43:2 to be with your children as we go through disasters of any kind. Comfort those who lost loved ones in the hurricane or its aftermath. Give the residents of the affected areas rest and strength to rebuild, and help us all to help our neighbors. In Jesus name.

Amen.

High School Memories

Fifty years? Really?

I attended my fifty-year high school reunion at Lake City, Michigan, on Saturday. It isn’t the high school that I would have preferred to graduate from, but I still had some good times there. If you want to know what I looked like then, I’m second from the left on the bottom row in the first photo.

We moved right after my sophomore year, so I didn’t grow up with these classmates. That happened at DeTour Village, Michigan. If I’d had my way, we would have stayed there until I left for college, but it wasn’t my choice. Many of my Lake City classmates did grow up together, and they are sharing those events and photos on the reunion Facebook page. I can’t related to those experiences, but here are some of the more memorable ones I did have in my last two years of high school.

Senior English with Mr. Leemgraven occurred in the same time slot as reruns of the television show “The Fugitive.” Somehow, we convinced him to let us watch the 2-episode finale in class.

I played an old maid in the senior play and enjoyed it immensely. (That’s me on the left in the second photo.) The entire experience was fun, but one particular evening practice—or actually before it—stands out. As a general matter, I either walked the ten blocks to school or drove over early with Mama, who taught in the elementary wing. So my classmates didn’t automatically connect me with our Volkswagen. But Brad Stanton had a similar one, and he drove it all the time. One night I drove ours to an evening practice and spun it around on the ice close to the school. Brad was also in the play, and he took a merciless ribbing. He must have been very confused, and he denied it vehemently. I probably told people the truth when I found out they thought it was Brad, but the memory has stuck with me.

The biggest advantage of Lake City over DeTour was that Lake City offered more extracurricular activities. I was in Senior Chorus my junior year, and it put on an annual operetta. I was just part of the chorus, but that was still fun. I would have loved to have been in it my senior year, too. Unfortunately, it conflicted with physics, and physics won out. I did do debate and forensics that year, however.

Then there was the one and only time I visited the guidance counselor. Mr. Ferguson was new, and he decided to start the school year by asking each of the seniors to come to his office and discuss their plans for after graduation. That was his job and he was trying to be helpful, and even then I knew I wasn’t being singled out, but at the time I was insulted that anybody thought I needed help from a guidance counselor. In what was probably the shortest session he ever had, I informed him that I had everything under control and had already been accepted at the college of my choice. I’m sure my words were respectful, but I don’t remember my tone . . . .

At the reunion, people made two main comments to me. The first was, “I remember your long hair.” The other was, “you and Cassie should have been valedictorian and salutatorian” (without specifying the order). Cassie said the same thing, although she accepted it more calmly than she did at the time. Dave (valedictorian) and Susan (salutatorian) had both been transferred to Lake City High School at the beginning of our senior year after their small country school closed, and their earlier grades transferred with them. That’s what I would have expected, but apparently there was some controversy about it. In any event, I felt at the time, and told people at the reunion, that I thought Dave was qualified to be valedictorian. We were in all the same classes senior year, engaged in friendly competition, and came out neck and neck grade-wise. So I never questioned that choice. I knew less about Susan since she was not on the college-prep track and we shared only one or two classes. But losing out on one of the top two slots didn’t affect either my college chances or my career progress, so it never really bothered me.

The final photo shows what fifty years does. (I’m in the back row in the blue-and-white stripped top.) We had just over sixty people in our graduating class. Although people who left before graduation were also invited and several came, this is still an impressive turnout.

I enjoyed the reunion, and I’m glad I went.

But it can’t have been fifty years.

Out for a Walk

We have several good bike trails around here. I walk them for exercise and listen to an hour’s worth of Great Courses lectures at the same time. That’s been my routine for years, and it still is. But I finally entered the 21^st Century.

In the past, I listened to the lectures on an early generation I-Pod. I took identifying information and emergency numbers, but it was too much trouble to carry both the I-Pod and my cell phone, so I couldn’t make emergency calls or take pictures. Every time I came across a good photo opportunity, I regretted that I couldn’t take advantage of it.

For me, photography is a serious hobby. When I’m traveling or on a hike looking for pictures, I take my Canon DSL, which gives me more options and better quality than a cell phone. But the Canon is a little heavy to carry when I’m primarily walking for exercise. So I finally gave in and bought a special case for my cell phone and figured out how to stream the lectures.

But now I have another problem. Walking for exercise works best when I keep a steady pace, and stopping for all those photo ops defeats the purpose.

I have included several photos that I took while walking last week. I recognize the Monarch butterfly, which is common around here at this time of year, but I need help identifying the flower and the other butterfly. Do any of my readers know what they are? (I think I can name the flower, but I’m not positive and I don’t want to influence anybody by telling you my guess.) The dark butterfly is also common around here, but none of my books have been any help with identification. Maybe that’s because the wings appear ragged and torn. It isn’t dead because I saw it flying before it landed on the leaf in the picture. I suppose the butterfly might be close to the end of its life, but I’m not sure about that, either, since it isn’t the first of its type that I have seen in that condition. So I would appreciate your help identifying the subjects of those two photos.

Too bad you can’t also tell me how to walk and take pictures at the same time.