Still Standing... · 5:56pm Nov 10th, 2011
Dear Loyal Watchers, Interested Visitors, and Confused Passersby...
I found myself traveling through a part of the Northeastern United States a few weeks ago that I hadn't been through in nearly a year. It was a very scenic section of the country and I was happy that I'd been able to wiggle in some room to come up and see what things were like...hoping to do a little "leaf peaking" as it were.
What met my eye was not such a beautiful vista but something more akin to a scene from a disaster movie.
Hurricane Irene had made her presence known there at the beginning of September. While this valley was located far from the ocean it had suffered greatly at the metaphorical hands of the hurricane. As I turned into one little hamlet my hands went to my mouth...I literally drove slowly down what was once the main street of the hamlet at about 15 m.p.h. with my eyes wide at the devastation.
The houses had been reduced to their structural members as the families ripped out the drywall. There was no grass, just a thin sheen of mud that seemed to cover everything. In the "downtown" section old general stores and pharmacies that had stood since the turn of the last century were blasted ruins, only their masonry cores still standing.
All about the ground little objects could still be seen poking up through the mud...lamps, books, toys, clothes.
As my car drove across the bridge the "rattatatataataa" of freshly laid asphalt showed me that the bridge itself had been thrown off of its footings by the power of the stream below. As I crossed it I looked to where the stream, usually so benevolent and serene, had scoured the surrounding countryside, had ripped away trees and devastated the scenic old barns.
When I did get to stop I desperately wanted to find a farm stand and buy anything I could...just to help out a little bit. When I found one I had another surprise...there were no pumpkins. A week before Halloween and there were no pumpkins to be had...they had all been washed away...
These scenes played out before me and I could not help feel more than a little beset. These people were still trying to salvage their lives, still combing through the mud and muck looking for small treasures, six weeks after the hurricane had passed. They stood around old oil barrels filled with burning scrap wood before their Yankee "gettoit" kicked in and they went back to pulling at the ruins.
We'd forgotten about them...we'd moved on to worrying about a Presidential election that's still a year away, we'd picked up the T.V. cameras and went back to worrying about Kim Kardashian's wedding, the N.B.A. lockout, Joe Paterno, the Greek economy...
We, we've failed them...
I've noticed something about disasters around the world and disasters here in the U.S. When we see images of natural disasters in other countries, we don't see their flags. There was no Rising Sun flag hoisted over any of the remains after Japan's earthquake that I saw...but in the U.S. it seems like that's our first instinct. I've often wondered why...I think I know know...
It's the Star Spangled Banner mentality..."our flag is still there". We're still here, we're not broken...we're still standing. Only the British with their "stiff upper lip, business as usual, keep calm and carry on" have something similar that I've seen. I hope that my Watchers from other countries can correct me on this, I look forward to hearing from them and hearing examples of such situations in their own nations.
We're still standing, we're here...that's the message that was written in spray-paint across the second floor of a house that had collapsed into the stream, and the flag flew from another deep in a sinkhole. We're here...where are you?
I donated all of my lunch funds to a group from my denomination that was going to be doing work in the region...seems like I do that a lot. I haven't had lunch since 2001.
It is in honor of that spirit, that "keep on keepin' on" mentality that I present a story inspired by what I felt as I saw the carnage, and as I smiled with the old man at the farm stand as he smirked his way through his understanding of the situation with dark humor, that I present to you Bailout, my newest story.
Stay Awesome,
-T.D.
