Rabid Fun

Infernal Machines – A Rant

2008-08-28T06:33:00.000-04:00

Machines hate me.

When it comes to mechanics and I need to do something complicated like putting staples in the stapler on my desk, I hand the machine over to Ginny.

But yesterday, I attempted to vacuum our pool. Nothing to it. All you have to do is attach the hoses and move the vacuum head over the bottom.

I tripped a circuit breaker.

It stayed tripped.

We’ll have to call an electrician.

Perhaps water damage from Fay got into some wiring in the back yard and shorted out everything.

Machines hate me…

The feeling is mutual.

I forgot to mention it yesterday but Tuesday was a local election; Ginny and I voted first thing before she left for work.

Good thing maybe.

The kid in the attic will be happy to know about our quaint election customs. At one library, just down the street from where our kids went to school, there was a shoot out. Reports vary but anywhere from five to 15 men got in a gun battle at the library/polling station and they fired between 20 and 35 bullets.

Lousy shots.

Only one guy was hit.

Local news media hardly mention the incident.

But, here’s my point about machines. Politicians have taken to rigging automated telephone machines to call me with a recorded message.

What an abomination.

I don’t like to be called by a live person working for a political campaign but I’ll tolerate that. However, it outrages me when a machine calls me. I don’t talk to machines—especially if there are ladies present.

When a recorded political message comes in, I note the candidate and hang up.

Then I vote for his opponent.

Regardless of political affiliation I vote for the candidate who does not have a machine call me.

Use of a calling machine proves the person using it is an insensitive clod.

Humans, decent humans, talk to each other.

I’m happy to say that the candidate who had his machine call me lost the election.

The best human won.

Aftermath

2008-08-27T06:17:00.000-04:00

Sunday I played Santa on the rooftop clearing off limbs and storm debris from the roof of our house. The lovely trees that overhand our property dropped Eight Million, by actual count, small branches in our yard.

The pile of storm debris I mounded by the curb so far is larger than a bus and I’ve hardly started with the back yard!

Yet our damage is minor compared to most people’s.

Monday my friend Wes treated me to breakfast and we talked about how to live Christian in the midst of some work-related problems.

Tuesday, I repaired a pool pump which shorted out during the storm. Got a significant electrical shock from the old pump housing, so I had to replace it. Our pool was well on the way to greening up and becoming a seven thousand gallon vat of mosquito larvae.

I added chlorine.

Die bugs. Die!

CERT training class Tuesday night focused on light search and rescue operations. I wish I’d had this training back in the ‘60s before the riots surrounding Martin Luther King’s assassination. Back then I played the part of an enthusiastic untrained spontaneous rescuer who may have done more harm than good.

I think CERT training should be a required course in every high school. This is something the present generation is going to need. What can they learn in school more important than survival?

Anyhow, last night the CERT instructor exposed us to thoughts about the structural integrity of damaged buildings, left-hand/right-hand wall searches, and mission focus.

I see that one of my mistakes in the aftermath of Fay as I visited each home in our horseshoe was that I over estimated my strength and I lost focus by talking too long with a couple of individuals who were upset and needed to talk, but who were physically uninjured. Therefore I did not get to as many homes as I might otherwise have.

As president of our neighborhood watch, I felt it my duty to check on the people living in our horseshoe. Our group motto is: Mind Your Own Business, But Look Out For Your Neighbor!

One advantage I had was that a day before the storm hit, after Ginny and I had secured our own home, I phoned everyone on my list of friends, family and Neighborhood Watch members; therefore, I knew in advance who planed to evacuate to a shelter, which households in the neighborhood doubled up with others, and who planed to leave town altogether.

In my phoning, I followed CERT triage protocol by not getting bogged down in phone tag; I called once, checked on people, then made the next call.

Amazingly, I encountered four people who did not know a storm was coming!

Doesn’t anybody watch the news?

In checking on my neighbors after the storm passed, I followed that same protocol of knocking on the door of houses I knew to be occupied (skipped one I knew vacant because of my phone calls). I knocked twice—with a metal key on the glass or wood so the sound carried better than bare knuckles. When someone answered I checked on them briefly and then I moved on to the next house.

Mostly I just listened to fears and problems, so some visits took a bit longer than others, but I tried to stay focused.

Last night as the instructor talked about the distraction of attaching yourself to given situation and thus being deflected from your mission focus, I extrapolated that information into my own Christian life and into my writing. If this journal shows nothing else, it reveals how easily I’m derailed and blunder off what I’m supposed to be doing.

My ease at being distracted by circumstances causes my days to resemble a life lived as a human ping-pong ball.

What harm were those leaves doing on my roof? Could they have stayed there another week? Is reading a novel more important than prayer?

I question these things, but I know full well that in God’s kingdom sometimes the sidetrack is the main road. I could have told my friend that I didn’t have time to talk because I have a desk full of work to do; but listening to him may well be the most important thing I do all week.

Loving overrides doing.

People are more important than tasks.

The only thing that will last forever is people.

One thing the CERT class confirmed that I did right in my house to house visits after the storm: At each home I asked about physical injures and medical problems. I asked about water and food. And I asked about electric power.

Later on, a JEA (Jacksonville Electric Authority) truck drove through the neighborhood and the workers asked me about power outages; I was able to tell them which individual houses had electricity, where a tree leaned against a power line, and which houses had generators running.

This last is important because electrical feedback from home generators can travel backwards in the wires and shock a JEA worker who thinks he’s working on a line that has been cut off.

The JEA guys seemed surprised that I had the information they needed at my fingertips.

Our class instructor said “All guns are loaded, and all electric lines are hot”.

I’d add to that—The metal casing of a swimming pool pump shocks like a rabid bluetoothed bitch!

That’s not Neighborhood Watch or CERT training, that’s personal experience.

By the way, three new hurricanes more powerful than Fay are forming in the Atlantic.

Oh the joys of life in Florida.

Days With Fay

2008-08-25T13:02:00.002-04:00

We survived.

Officially Tropical Storm Fay never reached hurricane strength although you’d never have guessed that here on the ground. In Florida eleven people died in the storm and property damage climbed into the millions of dollars. About half the population of Florida lost electric power and about eleven million people evacuated or huddled in public shelters.

While most offices and businesses closed, many bars stayed open.

I’m not sure, but this may account for some storm-related tragedies.

Three tourists here in Jacksonville decided it would be a cool idea to say they’d been swimming in the ocean during a hurricane. They all had to be rescued but one young lady drowned.

Down state, a young man decided it would be cool idea to fly a big kite in the storm winds along the beach. His kite first dragged him along the sand, then lifted him about 20 feet in the air, and finally slammed him into the side of a building. He only suffered broken bones but he know how a bug feels when it hits a car windshield. (I think videos of that kite suffer can be found on Google Video).

Ginny and I came out fine although one of our neighbors didn’t. Tons of wood fell on the home of one of our neighborhood watch members around the corner:

Even with all the damage from Fay, Ginny and I were not called upon to exercise our CERT (Civilian Emergency Response Team) training; throughout the storm professional responders kept access to all areas of the city. Fay was not a big enough disaster for CERT to kick in.

However we did use things we learned in our CERT classes. For instance, when asked to travel 15 miles at the height of the storm to do a helpful but unnecessary chore for someone, I said a flat out “NO”. I felt guilty about it, but I saw no reason to risk becoming a victim myself because of someone else’s lack of planning. This involved only property damage not loss of life.

I canceled my appointment with Dr. Woody Friday morning and later that afternoon the radio announced that a 12-foot long alligator was found swimming around in a flooded parking lot by the medical building.

Rising waters also drive snakes to higher ground—which often means into someone’s house.

Less dramatic but more common, ants, which normally live in underground nests, form rafts which float on water when the ground becomes supersaturated. People who wade in flood waters find themselves covered with stinging ants.

Mostly Ginny and I just hunkered down in our home listening to thumps as falling limbs crashed onto our roof. She caught up with tons of work in her home office; I studied the structure of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula.

Great reading for stormy days.

I’ve mentioned before how Dracula influenced me to begin keeping a daily journal over 30 years ago. But this re-reading of the novel related to another book I’m writing.

Once TS Fay crossed the Florida the first time, it stalled in the Atlantic about 20 miles south of here and sat there storming for days. During the early days, every time we heard a tornado warning, we’d go to the safest area of our house; but when alert followed alert day and night day after day, we almost ignored them and went about our business.

After six or seven days without even opening our front door, Ginny and I went stir crazy and we ventured out yesterday although there were still a few tornado alerts now and then. We met the kids still in town up at Dave’s Diner for breakfast. They are all fine.

Here’s a strange experience:

As a leader in our neighborhood watch, I felt it my duty to check on the people living in the 59 houses in our horseshoe. So, using the CERT triage principal of “start where you stand”, I began with our next door neighbor and moved from house to house around the horseshoe.

Now, I did not do anything for anybody.

I did not give our a single drink of water or rescue a single soul from a burning building. I just visited from house to house as best I was able and asked folks how they were doing.

The gratitude I encountered amazed me.

Brother Lawrence, author of The Practice Of The Presence Of God, said that it is not the greatness of a task that counts but the love with which it is performed. That we are to do little things for the love of God.

I almost agree.

But, I can’t claim to have acted toward my neighbors with any degree of love. Going stir crazy from being cooped up in the house motivated me more than anything else. Yet I learned long ago to pay little attention to my own motives; when you give a starving kid a sandwich, he doesn’t care diddle-squat about your motives—he just eats the sandwich. I’d go nuts looking for some pure motive in my own heart.

It just ain’t there.

But so many of my neighbors seemed pathetically grateful that someone had come by to check on them personally.

Of course I was not able to get to all 50+ houses (my legs gave out and I started trembling too bad to go on) but fortunately about 40 houses in, I ran across four young people who took over for me. These kids loved the excitement of helping neighbors. I’m pleased and proud of them.

One funny thing:

Fay forced the cancellation of all sorts of activities in Jacksonville. The Monster Truck Rally had to be postponed. One wedding got postponed. Concerts, sales, drives, picnics—all canceled or postponed.

But one elderly lady in a house I visited told me that Friday she was scheduled to go in for a colonoscopy. She arrived at the clinic to find she was the only patient who made it there through the storm. They saw her immediately.

“Of all the things this damn storm canceled,” she said, “Why couldn’t that have been one of them”!

Bye For A While

2008-08-20T08:26:00.002-04:00

Fay's on the way.
Shutting down my computer.
Power may go off any time now.
Last storm, it was off for nine days.
I just hung our hurricane warning flags at our front door.
Be back, God willing, whenever.
Love, John

Fun With Fay

2008-08-19T20:21:00.000-04:00

Hurricane Fay strengthened today as it crossed west to east from the Gulf over land in south Florida; such a storm strengthening over land is almost unheard of.

It now approaches. the Atlantic’s warm waters and threatens to curve back across the state, this time from east to west, here in North Florida with Jacksonville being the projected landfall.

Declaring a local state of emergency, Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton described Hurricane Fay as “Unpredictable, erratic, defying all odds”.

This morning, radio host Valerie Segraves, WEJZ 96.1, described Fay as, “ A lopsided, raggedy bully. She’s headed this way and she’s going to eat our lunch”.

Not mine!

Ginny’s taking the next three days off. And we have prepared as well as we are able to give ourselves the best chance. And we’ll do what we can to help others after the storm.

Our help promises to mean damn little because a minor health problem, beyond my normal dizziness, has kicked in for me and I doubt if much stumbling around in hurricane debris as a rescuer lies in my future; the professionals will have plenty of victims to worry about without my adding to the problem.

For days now the National Weather Service has issued announcements about Fay; some announcements are designated bulletins; others, warnings; others, advisories; and others, watches. Each designation means something different and tv commentators go nuts trying to explain the differences.

Radio and tv announcers have been updating weather reports every half hour.

This piling on of information leads to storm fatigue and system overload.

This afternoon, one radio announcer interrupted the song playing. He said, “I’ve just been handed two important announcements… Oh, this one is just from station management canceling Bring Your Daughter To Work Day…. This other one is from the weather service and it looks like a warning watch … or maybe it’s a watch warning”.

Ginny and I laughed till we cried.

I remember during a blizzard up in Washington, D.C., during the late 1960s, I was out driving in the ice storm on some mission of mercy (Christians do a lot of that sort of thing… Storm fodder, that’s what do-gooders are).

Anyhow it was about 3 a.m. in this monster ice storm with the wind howling and driving snow sheets straight out flat. The announcer on my car radio had been reading hazard warnings and weather updates for hours—I think he was snowbound at the station.

During a pause in the music he said, “Tonight’s weather report is for clear and still conditions…. It’s clear up to your ass and still snowing”!

Anyhow, during our regular devotional reading tonight Ginny and I came upon a Bible verse from Isaiah 30:

“For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength – And ye would not”.

I can’t decide if those words are comforting or not.

Preparing For Fay

2008-08-18T06:16:00.002-04:00

Last week during a typical afternoon thunderstorm, the kind we have every day all summer long, a gust of wind twisted steel girders and toppled two cranes at the port about seven miles from our home. Each crane weighed 11,000 tons and cost about six million dollars. They are a total loss. Here’s a photo that ran on Channel 12 TV:

What can man build that can withstand God’s wind?

Even though Hurricane Fay which approaches today ranks as only a minimal hurricane, Governor Crist has declared Florida in a state of emergency and ordered the evacuation of the keys.

Sunday’s projection by the National Weather Service predicts that our home lies right on the centerline in the Cone Of Uncertainty:

Ginny and I reviewed our normal hurricane preparations:

Year round we keep a cupboard of water, canned goods and tools we may need; we also have a Grab & Go box containing insurance policies, social security papers, medical records, etc. That’s always packed and by the door.

But as always last minute storm things keep us busy:

We checked the status of all our prescriptions and renewed the one that are low. We bought some extra comfort foods and two 9-volt batteries missing from our kit. We washed all the laundry because when the electricity goes out, who knows when we’ll be able to again? We made a bunch of phone calls to check if family or friends needed help. Then we sat back and watched a great tv movie called Fish Don’t Blink; a happy little movie we enjoyed tremendously although we had never even heard of it before.

As we talked and planned and worked (I still have to lug in Ginny’s dirt-eating potted plants from the deck) Ginny made a memorable statement of Christian faith:

“If Fay passes, we’re ok,” she said. “If we loose the house and car, we’re ok. And even if we die in the storm, we’re still ok. Nothing to worry about”.

I’ve mentioned before that at times I develop a tremor in my hands and legs; well, yesterday at breakfast was one of those times. And I played a joke on Ginny.

Remember in the Jurassic Park movies, how the guy’s coffee cup rippled and sloshed at the approach of the Tyrannosaurus?

Well, at breakfast as we discussed the approach of the storm, I pointed out the ripples in my coffee and said that the storm would have to wait because the T-Rex was coming first.

Ginny got the giggles.

As the waitress in Country Kitchen came to the table, I tried to control the coffee cup by holding it with both hands and I said, “Country Kitchen, Home of the Two-Handed Cup of Coffee”.

Ginny got to laughing so hard.

God, I love her so much. After all these years I still fell free to act silly around her; and she’s still coquettish enough to giggle and laugh at my foolishness.

Fay may twist steel girders, but love endures whatever storms life sends.

Adam Jones, Cyber Hero

2008-08-16T06:18:00.003-04:00

His hat says it—THE BEST.

His work confirms it.

Last night our friend Adam came over and restored my computer’s hard drive. The thousands of pages of text and photographs I’d lost back in June are now back on my monitor screen.

Adam’s work makes an enormous difference. For instance, one file I’d tried to restore myself cam eout at 162 pages with one page of footnotes; The same file which Adam restored returned to the screen at 256 pages with three pages of footnotes.

That’s for the same file.

Adam said that one of my file folders ran so huge that it took his computer four hours to copy it.

Although I’d been freelance writing for years before, I bought my first computer back in 1982. Over the years I’ve been moving files from disc to disc and from hard drive to hard drive through a bunch of computers.

My daily diaries, photos of naked internet women, Bible study notes, several drafts of 19 different books, dozens of book manuscript starts, web site materials, old newspaper articles, menus, work schedules – all this stuff disappeared when this last hard drive failed.

Yes, 20+ years of work gone in a tiny electric buzz.

Adam used his cyber skills and computer systems to resurrect the whole lot.

Somehow, he linked my burned out hard drive to one of his computers and jumped files from one to another. Then he took hard drive two and inserted it into the box on my desktop so that I now have two hard drives in the box.

You know something?

Only my name appears on the cover of my books. But the names of a host of other people should be there too. Donald who set me up with computers in the first place. Helen who worked in graphic designs. Eve who researched historical materials for me. Ginny who supported and encourages me in a thousand ways. Wes and Barbara who advise.... and now Adam who recovered all that I lost.

The Lord Christ richly blesses me with family and friends who believe in my work and make it possible for me to do it.

You know, this time in limbo without knowing if my work could ever be resurrected pained me; yet it also proved good for my soul.

While I felt anxious and fretted over loosing so many years of work, yet at the same time, I also reached a point of peace in reevaluating my work. If it had all been lost, what would have been lost?

Do I live for my writing? Or do I live for Christ through my writing?

Which is more important?

This time of trial brings me back to basics. Adam’s cyber skills give me a chance to start anew. Having lost every file, strengthens me.

In a sense, my work is my corn.

I remember what Jesus said about that, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”.

So, my computer is fixed.

What will I find to complain about next?

Ginny says I hold a Black Belt in whining.

Now Wait One Minute, Lord

2008-08-15T06:44:00.000-04:00

Last night, when tv news announced the possibility/probability of a major hurricane (still to be named) hitting Florida’s east coast by next Monday, I immediately resorted to prayer.

“Lord,” I prayed, “You can’t send a hurricane now. We haven’t finished our disaster training classes yet”.

Grim Subjects & Hope

2008-08-13T10:55:00.001-04:00

Tuesday I fiddled around waiting for a silent phone to ring.

It stayed silent.

During our Citizens Emergency Response Team class, we discussed grim subjects: field treatment for severe burns, amputations, impaled objects, blast injuries from suicide bomber actions, Bird Flu, eye wounds, setting up a treatment area and a morgue, etc.

We learned how to begin an Incident Command System in which the first person on the scene takes charge using the principle that you start where you stand. The goal is to do as much good for as many people as possible knowing that time is your enemy.

The best we can do in a widespread disaster is to give victims their best shot at surviving till professional help arrives—however long that may taks.

Disaster conditions seldom disappear in one loud flash, they may go on for months on end.

Thinking in terms of my interest in history, I compare what we are being trained to do for widespread disaster victims with the medical techniques Florence Nightingale found the first day she arrived on the Crimean battlefront. In fact, I wonder if we don’t even revert to Civil War medicine in order to cope with modern disasters.

It looks overwhelming.

I remember an old cartoon from the 1950s or early ‘60s when Civil Defense against nuclear attack ran high in everyone’s mind and installing home fallout shelters was in vogue.

The cartoon shows an elderly couple shopping for a fallout shelter in a showroom where various models at various prices were on display.

The salesman is asking them, “Just how big a bomb do you want to survive”?

Our class makes me think of that cartoon.

The more we train, the more inadequate I feel.

In the prospect of widespread disaster, if I survive I’m confronted with the fact that while I will be able to do little, at least I can possibly do something.

That’s something.

A Long Tough Day

2008-08-12T06:44:00.001-04:00

Writers read.

Monday I finished reading IT, a 1,000+ page novel by Stephen King.

A writing handbook I’m studying suggested that the aspiring writer study and analyze a book by an admired writer, and Stephen King is the writer I chose because I consider him to be the greatest craftsman alive.

I think I’ve read every Stephen King book, fiction and nonfiction, available. My favorite is Desperation. But I chose IT to analyze because of King’s large cast of characters and how he portrays them in the different ages of their lives.

My trouble with trying to study and examine a Stephen King book is that flow of his storytelling captures me so that I forget to analyze and just enjoy the story.

What a pleasure King is to read!

Over lunch at Dave’s Dinner, my friend Barbara White and I discussed King’s Dead Zone and marveled at his skill in foreshadowing events.

Barbara is retired religion editor of the local newspaper. Recently she spends a great deal of time ferrying her grown daughter, Mary, back and forth for chemotherapy treatments. I think Mary is on her fifth course of such treatments now and her doctor says she has lasted beyond the normal protocols for such treatments for small-cell lung cancer. He said she is on the outer fringes of treatment now.

Caring for her daughter exhausts Barbara.

I used my analogy of taking a loved one to a bus station or airport. And Barbara found it helpful.

You know, after you’ve packed everything, kissed and said your goodbye’s, and driven to the station, and unloaded baggage on the platform, and read the bulletin board, and talked over last minute instructions… And still the bus does not come for another 45 minutes!

Those last dragging minutes debilitate anyone.

You love ‘em, but you’re ready for them to leave.

There is no lack of love in your impatience, only the weariness of hanging around the bus station.

Or the doctor’s office.

Or the hospital room.

The guys at Dave’s teased the restaurant owner about just turning 40 this passt weekend. Chris, the head waiter, said, “You know you’re getting old when this month’s centerfold was born the year you graduated from highschool”!

Barbara came over and sat in our back garden talking as we looked for the hummingbirds to show up.

Perverse birds never did.

We talked about Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand and the nature of miracles in general.

I kept thinking of the grand miracle—Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

We tend to forget that the biblical word translated miracle can also be translated sign. The things Jesus did were signs to point out who He is.

Yes, it is humanly impossible to return from death three days after crucifixion.

That’s the whole point!

Humanly impossible.

Yet St. Paul declares that Jesus is declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead.

He is never presented as a local boy who made good as far as death is concerned, but Jesus is proclaimed to be God come in the flesh, Emmanuel, God with us.

What He did is the sign of who He is.

Monday evening Ginny and I attended a neighborhood watch meeting where she reported on our CERTs training.

Our guest speaker was Lisa who gave us some fine gardening tips then led the group on a tour of her lovely garden, a garden which puts mine to shame. We only toured half before dark fell, so I invited her to speak again and continue the tour at a future meeting.

As the glorious president, grand phewbah, and exalted leader of the group, I got to end the meeting with one of my wonderful jokes:

Ernie was a very wealthy man.

He could buy anything he wanted.

But, alas, he forgot his wife’s birthday.

She was furious. Irate! She dragged him to the living room window and pointed to the driveway. “Tomorrow morning I want to see my birthday present sitting right there in the drive,” she screamed. “It had better be something that’ll go from zero to 200 in less than fifteen seconds, or you’re going to be sorry!”

Well, next morning she looks out the window and sees a package in the driveway. It’s wrapped in beautiful paper with a gold bow on top.

She rushes out, rips off the paper and finds a brand new bathroom scale.

You might want to pray for Ernie.

Where To From Here?

2008-08-11T05:51:00.002-04:00

This weekend I hunched over my computer keyboard trying to figure out where to go from here.

If our friend Adam, who recently graduated with a degree in computer science, can repair my broken hard drive, then I plan to finish the book on Jacksonville’s fire department history. If the thing is too broken for him to restore, I’ve outlined another novel to write.

But, in outlining this novel and profiling characters and setting up scenes, I discovered that my initial premise is not true.

Bummer.

I attempt to be an honest man and enough false ideas float around in the atmosphere already, so it goes against my grain to promote an idea that I don’t believe is not true.

But this is a novel, a work of fiction. Nobody believes a make-believe story. Yes a novel should be true to life but it is a work of the imagine. The rabbits in Richard Adams’ Watership Down act real, but no one is lead astray into thinking real rabbits talk.

Nevertheless, I feel uncomfortable promoting a false premise.

So, I hunch brooding over my computer.

Waiting for word from Adam as to whether or not he can restore my history files.

I’ve been at this thing too long.

I’m beginning to atrophy.