First Helene, now Milton

Got lots of friends in the path of this monster.  On either side of the Florida peninsula.

I'm praying that this might yet sputter out before it makes landfall.  Hurricanes have been known to be crazy like that.  Not often, but it does happen.

Please y'all, be safe.

Read More

One new chapter this past week, and a medical emergency

I am both proud of myself and a little let down.  I only wrote one new chapter for my book this past week.  

Maybe I should forgive myself?

For my own account of things, my life is still being impacted by Hurricane Helene, an hour or so south of the true devastation.  A few days ago on Friday I saw my psychiatrist and got refill prescriptions for my medication.  I assumed the scripts were sent over to the pharmacy as usual.  When I went to pick up the refills early that evening however, the pharmacy was closed and there was a note on the door saying that their Internet was down and they couldn't fill prescriptions at all.  I had gotten an automated text from the pharmacy several days earlier, saying the hurricane had knocked out their computers.  I just assumed they would have been back in business already.

That was a wrong assumption on my part.

There was one med in particular that I was all out of.  I was counting on getting the refill.  And I needed that med.

It might have been a long shot but I drove to the emergency room of the nearby hospital and explained my situation to them.  It was a very good idea, because a little less than an hour later they gave me an Rx for a "bridge" of the med I needed to get me through the next week.  A quick visit to the CVS practically next door to the hospital later and I had my medication.

That emergency averted, I went home and plopped down and tried to write something, anything.  Before I knew it I was working on a new chapter.  It's the final one of part two, which covers a nine-years span of my life.  I completed it last night.  And there are going to be some edits and revisions but the basic endoskeleton is in place at least.  I'm happy with it.

I'm going to try to write some more today, before my week begins in earnest and the opportunity to write before Saturday becomes diminished.  I'm supplementing my typical work with a part-time job, it lets me engage with more personal projects on weeknights and long weekends.  Maybe I'll get to knock something else out before returning to that job tomorrow.

Read More

Helene: After the storm

The past few days will go down in history.  The comparison I keep hearing is that "this is our Katrina" and that's not inaccurate at all.

If God saw fit to humble us, He certainly did with Hurricane Helene.

As I write this it's almost 7:30 pm EST on October 1st, 2024.  I was away from the house for much of the day so I don't know when exactly the juice came back on but when I returned an hour ago the power was restored.  It had been out since a little before 8 on Friday morning, four and a half days ago.  So that's about a hundred hours that we were without electricity.

I drove around the area on Friday night.   Didn't get too far.  There were big trees fallen all over the place, across the roadways.  I've never seen so many power lines down.

I had to conserve battery power on the various devices, like my phone and iPad.  Yesterday morning I ventured out and got to the library in downtown Spartanburg, found a spot on the floor next to a wall outlet and recharged the phone.  I've been limiting its use, employing it only when absolutely necessary.  Because there was no telling when power would come back to our homes.

My dog and I are in upstate South Carolina.  And it could have been much worse.

Asheville, North Carolina is a little less than an hour to our north.  As of this evening I-40 going east out of the city is open but nothing else.  The town is pretty much unreachable except by helicopter (Asheville Regional Airport is starting to get supply flights coming in but that's a bit far from the city limits).  At last count more than 60 people are dead from the storm in Buncombe County.

Half an hour to our west, we have friends in Greenville.  They have been without power since Friday.

The town of Chimney Rock has been wiped off the map.

Sections of highways in the western part of North Carolina have been destroyed.

Local schools are out until Monday next week.  Remote learning via Internet is also out.

The power crews are working around the clock to restore electricity.  They have come in from all up and down the country and some have arrived from Canada.  They can't possibly be appreciated enough.

As for my own account...

Restricting the use of devices meant that it would be unwise to write, no matter how creative I was feeling.  And the only flashlight I have is on my iPhone.  So  I spent the daylight hours doing lots of reading.  I try to read George Orwell's 1984 every few years and I was behind on that so Sunday afternoon I was engorged in that novel.  And yesterday, for whatever reason, I started re-reading Helter Skelter.  I did write a bit for my book, the old-fashioned way: with a pen and notebook.  So I guess it can be said that my attempt to contribute to the world's literature is sort of a multimedia effort.

It's been a wild past few days.  And I was expecting the power to be restored sometime late Friday.  So I'm very thankful that it's back.

I've been through hurricanes a number of times in my life.  Helene topped them all.  For it to come this far inland and still packing a punch is almost a freak occurrence.  It's being called a one-in-a-thousand-year catastrophe.

And that's pretty much my report.  Going to spend the rest of the evening getting my bearings back, take a LONG hot shower, give my dog Tammy some love and treats, maybe watch a movie.

Helene has certainly made me thankful for things that we too often take for granted.  And like I said, it could have been worse here.

Thoughts and prayers going up and out for everyone who's been affected by this storm.

Read More

Weekly book report for September 30th 2024

 Well, this turned into something interesting.  My home is in the upstate of South Carolina.  Three days ago the entire western Carolinas region got slammed hard by Hurricane Helene.  I lost power on Friday morning about 7:30 and 77 hours later it still hasn't been restored.  Based on what I saw on the way to the library in downtown Spartanburg this morning, it may be days if not weeks before power is turned back on 100%.

This was a catastrophe on the same level as Hurricane Katrina.  Our kids will be telling their grandchildren about this one.

So I wasn't able to work most of the weekend, because power is out.  Until yesterday when I started writing in a notebook with a pen, jotting some thoughts down that will go into further chapters.  It will honestly be able to be said that I worked on this book through a hurricane.

Anyhoo, since last week I have been able to fully write one chapter, along with editing the previous one and the aforementioned bits and pieces that have been jotted down.

And that's pretty much it, for now.

Read More

First weekly book update

Almost a month ago I posted about the status of my book, something that had been on the back burner of my life for ten years now.  Work on it has taken various forms, there had been progress made only for that to be tossed aside... well, it's been a mess, not to put TOO fine a point on it.

Things are very, very different now and have been for much of this past year.  A few months ago I had a breakthrough moment and was able to crank out the first few chapters of the story of my life.  That has led to more, and more.

Maybe it will help to keep me on track to post a status of this memoir's progress, say each week on Sunday.  Perhaps that will encourage me to stay committed.

Here it is as of September 22nd, 22024: so far, not counting the preface, there are fifteen chapters that have been written.  I spent most of this past week working on one, that had really been making me struggle.  It's still considered a VERY rough draft but early word that a dear friend I shared it with is that it's good.

There are going to be at least six parts.  Part one is complete.  There are five chapters done so far for part five, which is currently titled "Three Months and Three Ladies".  I'm not writing this book in sequential order.  Just working on it as the Muse leads me.

There is still a lot of work to be done.  Ideally I would be producing two to three chapters a week, but I'll be happy if it's even just one.  This book is finally getting the attention I needed to lavish upon it.  It's not going to be rushed.  But when it's finished, I will have written my life story, as well as such things are possible.

And that's how things stand now.

Read More

Lost turns twenty

4 8 15 16 23 42

 

It was twenty years ago tonight - September 22, 2004 - that arguably the greatest television series of the new millennium premiered.

Lost was an instant sensation and for six seasons its tale of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 gripped the world's consciousness.  ABC's hit broke all the rules, subverted expectations, and cooked long-held tropes like so many White Castle hamburgers.  Lost was television of the highest order of storytelling.  Yes, its story ended without every mystery getting a solid answer... and many maddeningly unresolved.  But some things should be left to the imagination and Lost certainly provided viewers with fresh new enigmas seemingly every week to ruminate upon.

I think that Lost wasn't so much about the riddles as it was about the characters.  That was the greatest ensemble cast assembled in the modern history of the medium and they brought to life some incredibly deep and multi-layered personas.  My most favorite character was John Locke: the crippled "man of faith" who inexplicably regained the ability to walk after Oceanic 815 crashed on the island.  There was so much about him that resonated with me.  And I also came to have some sympathy for Benjamin Linus, perhaps the most flawed of the show's characters.  I like to think that Ben found redemption in the end, and truly repented of his ways.  It was as good an end to his arc as there could probably be had.

I'm not going to post about Lost without mentioning my personal favorite theory, something that I've never seen anyone else posit.  I think that David, Jack's son from the flash-sideways world, was the child who came about when Jack and Kate made love before taking off on the Ajira flight.  Eloise had told the people who came to the Lamp Post that they had to recreate as closely as possible the conditions of the original flight. What she told Kate was that she had to conceive a child so that Kate could be a proxy for Claire, who had been pregnant on the Oceanic 815 flight.  Well, David had to come from somewhere.  And he even looks like he could be a child of Kate and Jack, too.  He was very well cast.

I also think that the Man in Black wasn't Jacob's brother at all.  As evidenced by the hieroglypics that Ben found, the Smoke Monster had existed on the island long before Jacob's mother came.  The Monster simply assumed the appearance of Jacob's brother.  Jacob found his brother's body, it hadn't been transformed at all.  Again, just a theory.

Well, I could go on.  This show left us with so much that we're still discussing and debating fourteen years after its final episode.  That says something about any series's timeless quality.  And I doubt that in another twenty years we'll be too exhausted to still be talking about it.

So, let's raise our glasses of Dharma Initiative cola and toast Lost on its twentieth anniversary!  Just as amazing today as it was in 2004.

Read More

Rest in peace James Earl Jones

 

I got to meet him, briefly, in 2003.  Amazing man, with an intellect as formidable as his voice if not more so.

Ninety-three is a good run.  And he definitely made his mark.

Who else could make saying the alphabet so dramatic?

Godspeed Mr. Jones.  Thank you for sharing your gifts with us for so long.

Read More