The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    barefooted's picture

    Oh, Florence ...

    By barefooted on Thu, 09/13/2018 - 11:25pm |

    She's going to beat up my home of 53 years.  I can't fight back.  My body isn't there but my heart is, and emotions are everywhere.  It's almost surreal to remember being a part of it, in the midst of it - the fear, the unknown, the almost palpable relief when it finally started because even if you couldn't do more than experience it at least you knew.  While it lasted, you were a part of it.  Every rain drop, every gust.  I can't do that from here and it's crushing me.  I was just there less than three years ago ...

    All the town names, the city names that talking heads can't quite pronounce, the tiny blurbs on a hurricane tracking map, are pieces of me.  A child/teen in Newport and Morehead City, way back when, biking and horseback riding the two-lane road - sometimes racing cars (along the side of the road) on my Quarter horse, Red.  It's a major highway now that might be gone or destroyed by Saturday.

    One of my favorite drive-ins, El's, will likely be under water soon.  If it comes back, as it likely will - dammit! - you have to get a shrimpburger if you're in town.  But at this point you'll need to give the town awhile.

    I developed my career in hotel management in Pine Knoll Shores/Atlantic Beach.  I also played on the beaches that are now being devastated.  They've been hurt before, more times than I like to think about, but this time will be a gut punch.  They'll be back ... I can only hope.  The strong likelihood is that they won't return in any way that my memory will recognize.

    Then there's the flooding.  Please, people, get out.  Floyd, 1999 (the name was retired because of the, well ...) is stained in my mind. It came ashore as a mild Cat 1, moved inland, stalled and drenched the state for days.  Rivers and tributaries rose, cites were isolated without power or outside access for weeks - the beach was fine. This is not that, in particular because it will stall either just off or on the coast.  Then it will slowly move.  Very slowly.  It's the rain, even after the storm surge that might destroy my home town(s), that will cause the biggest threat and catastrophic damage.

    I'm rambling.  I'm sorry.  My mind is everywhere but my heart is specific.  And it's really hurting.

    Comments

    Thank you for letting me see it through your eyes.


    by moat on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 6:59pm

    Thanks for caring, moat.


    by barefooted on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 7:23pm

    Eloquent ode; fingers crossed for you.

    I had family staying in place in a boarded up house through Irma in Ft. Lauderdale and a friend worried about property in the Caribbean during Maria. If you want up-to-date local pictures and video and other info. (and maybe you don't, maybe that would panic you too much or make you sad), I learned communicating and helping with communication, that all the action seems to be on Twitter now. Probably because the locals can basically do it like texting on their phones even when electricity and internet is out, they get their phone charged up somehow, and then tweet and it goes out to tons of people.

    Forgive if you already know this: You just check (in the searchbox @ Twitter.com) for possible hashtags on the areas that you are looking for info. on, and see if people are posting and putting things on that hashtag. I.E. #MoreheadCity or #NewportNC. And soon by surfing around from that, you'll see at the end of posts what hashtags most people start using in the areas that you want news from.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 9:33pm

    I'm sorry that it's taken a week for me to tell you how much I appreciated your words - and your practical attempt to help.  I've been wrapped up in all of it while still realizing that there are other reasons to freak out in the world at large - can we say overload?

    I'm okay, and North Carolina will be, too.  Eventually ...


    by barefooted on Fri, 09/21/2018 - 9:02pm

    The last day I was thinking of posting on this "where are you, you and yours okay?" Not to be nosy about private stuff but just to let you know you're missed at this club when you don't show up.

    Yeah, the aftermath is that things are just real sad and for a really long time and people just have to buck up and deal with it. It's a mourning process because it actually looks like death, there's the third world thing and then also all the plants are dead and the birds are missing, and all the people are sad and worn out from the daily grind of getting the basics, etc. But eventually and slowly....


    by artappraiser on Fri, 09/21/2018 - 9:23pm

    "Buck up and deal with it".  Well, that's the immediate necessity, isn't it?  First you wait to see how high the water goes once you're (hopefully) out, then wait 'til the water recedes and then you tear your flooded house down to the studs. Everything goes.  If your foundation is still good you're in luck!  Insurance?  Maybe.

    Ugg.  But thank you, arta, again.  When you said I'm missed here when absent my heart skipped a beat.  And for the first time in a while, in a good way.


    by barefooted on Fri, 09/21/2018 - 9:49pm

    You're sure you're  Ok? Then I'll post what I refrained from posting a week ago out of compassion. North Carolina will not be ok. Eventually the whole coastal region will be under water. From Wilmington NC down to Miami FL up to Bangor Maine. I kept trying to pretend something might be done before it was too late but I'm done living in denial. Let us stop pretending. It's still possible we might save the earth and homo sapiens but the whole coastal region is gone, dead man walking, it's too late to save it. 


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 09/21/2018 - 9:36pm

    No argument here.  Both coasts are doomed, though the Atlantic likely will lead the way.  It will start with Florida slowly shrinking and the east coast being sheared off by increasingly intense storms ... pick your disaster, any disaster.  But, ocean, why stop there?  Is there anywhere safe to live?


    by barefooted on Fri, 09/21/2018 - 10:11pm

    I'm not sure what you're trying to say. No one gets out of here alive. But some places are safer than others though it's possible that in the end no where will be safe for any large land mammals. I'm still trying to be optimistic enough to think we'll take sufficient action in time for homo sapiens to survive but I'm no longer optimistic enough to think the coastal cities will.


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 09/21/2018 - 10:26pm

    As the coasts shrink, the population will be forced inland.  More people in the tornado alley's, more people in earthquake zones, more people subject to wildfires and mudslides.  Etc., etc.  I don't mean to downplay the obvious about the coasts, or the gulf, but what's left?  People have to live somewhere, and the population is rising.


    by barefooted on Fri, 09/21/2018 - 10:39pm

    But those areas vote Dem and the west coast will be wiped out by fire and mudslide. The master plan's working, bwa-ha-ha


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 1:55am

    These overwrought alarmist visions of the future are a bit melodramatic and history shows that most humans are adaptable and brave enough to survive whatever nature sends our way. Some snowflakes may cut and run in the face of adversity but most people will rebuild and recover from this and future disasters. The government dredges will soon be repairing the damaged beaches while tourists and locals will return to enjoy the Gulf Stream waters with only an occasional shark bite interruption. The idea that people will sit on their hands doing nothing while the sea slowly rises forcing them to abandon costal cities is alarmist nonsense. The Dutch have been fighting the sea for a thousand years and winning the the war creating one of the seven wonders of the modern world with their recent reclaiming of the Zuiderzee from the North Sea.

    by Peter (not verified) on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 11:39am

    The socialist Dutch? surprisedyou admire them. Anyway, the coasts are *majority* snowflake, and the hurricans and rising tides are here to stay, so no, no exit to gwondonaland - it'll be snowflakopolis, the end of snowflakes as we know them. Not even a single tear?


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 1:30pm

    Triggering Libtards
    as they float in their front yards
    make Chickenhawks soar.

    Alamogordo bunker
    lets them safely hunker.


    by moat on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 2:16pm

    I love it, the superb black humor we all need smiley


    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 2:49pm

    Forbes rates the Netherlands as number three in their Best Countries For Business Index and I doubt they would if the Netherlands were a commie state. Their reclamation bureau is no more socialist than ours and private enterprise does most of the work. We can hope that snowflakeism will dissolve in the rising tide of populism so everyone can look forward to a better future.

    by Peter (not verified) on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 2:31pm

    The Dutch are Warmer snowflakes, looking to a better future without coal, fossil fuels and without the coasts of the entire world becoming a Zunderzee dike project:

    A coalition of seven Dutch political parties recently unveiled a climate policy proposal that is breathtaking in its ambition. If it becomes law, it will codify the most stringent targets for greenhouse gas reductions of any country in the world.


    by NCD on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 4:20pm

    Thought I'd put this here since it's a hurricane concern ...

    Has anyone heard from Trkingmomoe (sp? momoe, to me) or know how she is?  I remember her living in a mobile home community on the gulf side of northern Florida - I truly hope I'm misremembering.


    by barefooted on Thu, 10/18/2018 - 8:29pm