Sunday, June 29, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Donate Your Boat
I've been puzzling over that bilboard. Why would I want to donate my boat? Then, the rains came and now it made sense. It rained for a few days. Then a few weeks. And suddenly inundation set in. Well, let's better call it what it really was, a flood. As the Gazette, our local newspaper named it, an EPIC SURGE. It was all of that.
And the folks lost the scrapbook stuff that pasted their lives together so that they made some sort of sense. Pictures of that wonderful week in Minnesota when they landed a string of bluegills and crappies, a signed garter from their high school prom, a pressed flower from a first communion, a hospital first picture of a squealing newborn, and the memories of equally precious stuff.
Gone forever. Washed away. Dissolved into detritus. Crap!
So what would you grab if surging waters gave you moments to clear out? Dianne and I pondered that question and we couldn't come up with a sensible handful of stuff. We decided we'd do what tens of thousands of folks did, just get the hell out of the way.
And mourn over the lost stuff. Refrigerators can be replaced. So can dishwashers, clothes dryers and Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. But not the physical fragments of the memories that buttress our lives. And that's the real sadness that hangs like a cloud over eastern Iowa.
Few, if any, gave their lives; but all those submerged dreams lie fragmented in a cold and muddy grave. And we grieve for them.
Iowans will rebuild like good folks everywhere would. But there will linger a grief that remains forever. No amount of FEMA, state or local aid, can bandage that wound. And that's the real tragedy of natural disasters.
I'ts drying out now.
But some tears don't dry very well.
And the folks lost the scrapbook stuff that pasted their lives together so that they made some sort of sense. Pictures of that wonderful week in Minnesota when they landed a string of bluegills and crappies, a signed garter from their high school prom, a pressed flower from a first communion, a hospital first picture of a squealing newborn, and the memories of equally precious stuff.
Gone forever. Washed away. Dissolved into detritus. Crap!
So what would you grab if surging waters gave you moments to clear out? Dianne and I pondered that question and we couldn't come up with a sensible handful of stuff. We decided we'd do what tens of thousands of folks did, just get the hell out of the way.
And mourn over the lost stuff. Refrigerators can be replaced. So can dishwashers, clothes dryers and Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. But not the physical fragments of the memories that buttress our lives. And that's the real sadness that hangs like a cloud over eastern Iowa.
Few, if any, gave their lives; but all those submerged dreams lie fragmented in a cold and muddy grave. And we grieve for them.
Iowans will rebuild like good folks everywhere would. But there will linger a grief that remains forever. No amount of FEMA, state or local aid, can bandage that wound. And that's the real tragedy of natural disasters.
I'ts drying out now.
But some tears don't dry very well.
Ok, so God promised a rainbow to follow His rains. Thoughtful plan there. It's what us positive thinkers always look for. And this one has the three ironies of what will forever be called the Great Iowa Flood of '08.
First, because sewers don't function up to snuff during a flood, many people had to evacuate because they couldn't, well, evacuate. That's truly a delicious irony.
Second, with gazillionas of gagallons of water thrashing down on us, guess what is rationed? Yep. Water.
Third, the wireless carrier CommSpeed had a local center on Third Avenue and second street down town in Cedar Rapids. Under water and out of service, for sure. So how did they inform their dealers that they had no wireless service? You guessed it. They sent an email.
Wouldn't you agree that real life surpasses fiction six different ways from Sunday? Yeah. Me, too. As my UI Dental College friend, Dean David Johnson, always tells me, 'Keep your powder dry!' Good advice.
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