The Day After: Addendum

It's the day after, again.

This time instead of shock, we have comfort; instead of fear, we have peace; instead of doubt, we have hope. We have passed our greatest test in modern times. And we are whole, for now.

The day before, a day full of pomp and circumstance, tradition and ceremony, we inaugurated a new president. We survived the challenge and watched the Tyrant slink away in disgrace. We completed the peaceful transition of power, though indelibly stained in the books of history, under security no previous inauguration has ever sat beneath. Two weeks ago we watched a violent insurrection against the very principles that made yesterday happen, uncertain of the outcome. Those that would destroy our country to get their way rather then share it were defeated. This time. We must not let our guard down.

The day after I feel like a New Year just opened in front us. It's a new day in Washington, the clouds have lifted, and we can start to heal the nation. I know everything is not fixed and we have a long road ahead. I know these troubles, and these people, won't go away over night. But I also know the hope I felt 12 years ago, at Barack Obama’s first inauguration, is back. That we have set our feet on the right path again, stepped away from institutionalized injustice and sanctioned prejudice. Like then, it is tempered with the knowledge that there is no magic wand to wave away the troubles. We are still in the midst of a pandemic. We are still on the precipice of an economic cliff. There are still dark shadows on the edges of our nation, waiting for a chance to rise again and threaten who and what we are.

On this day after we must be vigilant. Our Democracy is fragile, more so than we could have imagined a month ago. It must be tended and cared for and nurtured. Because if we take it for granted, the shadows will win.

The Day After...

  The day after, we are still in shock. A mob, lead by Tyrant in the guise of a president, seized, assaulted and gained access to the most sacred halls of our Democracy.

 The day before, we sat as a nation, watching Congress meet. We expected protests, we expected challenges, and we expected debate. What we did not expect was for an unhinged, selfish demagogue to incite a riot. We did not expect his supporters to march to the Capitol and threaten the lives and safety of our elected officials because they didn’t get their way. We did not expect these so called “patriots” to tear down an American flag to put up the Tyrant's flag.  We did not expect the mob to push their way through barricades and take the law into their own hands. We did not expect insurrectionists push through the halls of the Capitol, vandalize offices, break windows, and parade around the Senate floor like they were in a carnival fun-house, posing for selfies from the chair of the president of the Senate. We did not expect to see rioters walking through the halls proudly waving symbols of hate and division.

  The day after an armed group of insurrectionists intent on a coup failed to halt the Congressional certification of our presidential election, we sit stunned by the events we’ve witnessed.

 The day before, it was not certain what the outcome would be. We watched as the “leader of the free world” cowered in his office, tweeting encouragement and praise to the mob instead of calling for reinforcements for the Capitol Police. We watch him call them “special people”, calling for them inundate Washington, Make American Great Again. We watched the Tyrant say he "heard them" and "loved them", instead of condemning their violent actions. He was derelict in his duty to protect Congress simply because they didn’t agree with his world view. And finally, when shamed into making a statement, he continued the lies and falsehoods that lead us to this day. "The USA is embarrassed by fools.” That, sir, may be the only truthful thing you said that day.

The man, who in his twisted and stunted view of what his America should be, cajoled and encouraged a mob to attack Congress, then sat back and watched, gleefully. The day after, we are appalled at the response of our “president”.

  The day before, when the Capitol building had been cleared of rioters, order restored to the chambers, and our elected officials returned to their places to continue their Constitutional duties, many had still not learned. To those of you who still contested this election in support of the Tyrant, you sold your soul to a child grasping at straws to stay on power, you tried to sell the soul of the Nation to someone not fit to lead, and you learned we will not stand for this. The steal has been stopped, the coup canceled, and the insurrection has failed. The Tyrant lost. He lost on Nov 3, 2020, and he lost on this day.

  The day after, we will not forget how you tried to disenfranchise millions of voters under specious claims of fraud. We will not forget the support you’ve given the Tyrant. We will not forget this day in our history. Propaganda paints a thin veneer of reasonability over lies and calls it patriotism. Patriots stand up to Tyrants, they do not coddle them.

  The day before we watched the Capitol Police overwhelmed by the mob. Why were the Capitol Police left to fend for themselves? Why did it take so long for the National Guard to be called, and why, Mr. “President", did the Vice-President have to make that call? Why did you call out the Army this summer to clear a smaller peaceful protest so you could hold up a bible you do not follow in front of a church you do not attend? Why did you use tear gas to clear those peaceful protestors, many of whom wear a skin tone darker than those that so violently raided the Capitol? On this day before, where was the tear gas?  Where was the protection for this institution, itself a monument to the Democracy you claim to hold so dear? Was it because they would not do your bidding you simply did not deem it important enough to protect?

  The day after, many are wringing their hands and saying they couldn’t have known this would happen. Have they not been listening for the last four years, the last four months, the last four days? Did they think this was all innocent rhetoric, to be forgotten before the next election? Did they think that the calls for the vice-president to simply declare the election invalid and anoint the Tyrant to a second term simply idle talk that could be ignored later. The threat to the Democracy was real, and present, and transparent. Yet, many simply sat back and watched, amused?, until the mob threatened them. And still, many did not learn.

    The day before, we saw pictures of the Capitol Police trying to hold back a crowd whose numbers overwhelmed them. We saw officers with weapons drawn in the House Chamber trying to protect those sworn lawmakers trying to complete their solemn duty to the people and the Constitution of the United States. We saw pictures of rioters waving the Tyrant's flag and standing on the bases of our forefathers monuments with fists raised in Statuary Hall. We saw their selfies posted on Twitter and Facebook like they’d just attend some bizarre and innocuous family gathering. We saw them vandalize and destroy the offices of those they did not favor, and leave the others untouched. They wore no masks. We saw the trash they left behind, desecrating the People's House they claimed to own. But it is not solely their House. It is the House of all the people, not just a few who can not accept that their Tyrant did not win. Everyone of them should be tracked down and charged with unlawful entry, trespassing and destruction of government property. They broke the law. The “Law and Order” party must prosecute.

  The day after, we are horrified by what we have seen.

 The day before, after much delay, rhetoric and disgrace, the Speaker of the House reconvened Congress with these words: “...we will stay as long as it takes. Our purpose will be accomplished. To those who strove to deter us from our responsibility, you have failed. To those who engaged in the gleeful desecration of this, our temple of Democracy, American Democracy, justice will be done.” Congress completed its duty and decreed Joseph R. Biden would be the next President of the United States, and Kamala D. Harris would be the next, and first female, Vice-President of the United States.

  The Senate Chaplain, Barry Black, closed the session with this prayer: “These tragedies have reminded us that words matter and that the power of life and death is in the tongue. We have been warned that eternal vigilance continues to be freedom’s price.” The world was watching us.

 The day after the world watched Democracy win, we must still be vigilant. Words do matter, and we must never, ever let this happen again.

Equal Time...

The Equinox marks the time when the sun is directly over the equator, the moment that half the sun’s light falls on the northern hemisphere and half falls on the southern hemisphere. This year that moment happened at 3:50am EDT. On this day, if you can see the horizon, you can mark due east or due west when the sun transitions into or out of sight. Strangely enough, this day is not the day that has equal minutes of light and dark.  That happens on Sept 27, at least in my area.

  Edward and I have a collection of four lead crystals. Each one represents a season. A snowflake for winter, such as it is in Florida, a rain drop for spring, a round crystal for the sun in summer, and a leaf for fall.  We try to change them out on the holiday, but we often forget. Sometimes we forget for weeks. But not this year.

  This evening we remembered to change the crystal on the day. As I hung the crystal, the sun shone through the trees in the back yard setting the prayer flags hung on the porch aglow. That light shone through the crystal, half green, half red.

  In Florida, this date marks the beginning of the end of summer. This morning, on the day the sun passes to the south, Mother Nature gave her first real hint of the cooler weather to some. She’s not done with us yet, but as we move towards shorter days we celebrate the passing of summer, the coming of fall and changing of the seasons.

Chapter 3

 I recently retired after a 32-year career, 30 of which I worked for the Federal government. Most of my Federal time was spent working for the U.S. Geological Survey. I loved my time at the Survey. I worked with a fantastic group of people on a fantastic journey to predict what hurricanes would do to our nation’s coastlines. I often saw the impact of many of these storms before. The diversity of the changes along the shore when one of these storms made landfall were varied and heartbreaking, for individuals as well as the environment. And yet, Nature always recovered, or she found a new path. Her resilience is inspiring and beautiful to watch. She doesn't bemoan the loss of a marsh buried in sand or the break in an island. She returns to the path she was on, or creates a new one. It is we who build our castles and expect them to last forever. 

  A barrier island is, by nature, designed to move. It rolls over upon itself in retreat from storm surge. Sand from the beach or dunes is washed over the island and deposited in a new location. That new deposit becomes habitat for new communities. A loss in one location becomes a new beginning in another. Nature will adjust to the change and continue on. It will do the same as sea level rises. It has always shifted; it will always continue to do so... or at least try.

 It is only when we build fixed structures on our coastlines that we realize how truly dynamic this system is. We build castles on sand dunes and expect the sea to leave them untouched. It doesn't, and it never will. To believe it will do so is a fool's errand. Our planet is dynamic and the ground we stand on is always shifting. We can't always perceive that shift, but at our coastlines we can often see the changes right before our eyes. Sometimes year to year, sometimes in the blink of an eye.

  We can learn a lot from Mother Nature. She is fickle and ever changing. Our lives, like the ground we stand on, is ever shifting, no matter how much we wish things were the way they were before. We don't always recognize the change as it happening, as it is usually slow in most places. But sometimes the change is sudden and catastrophic. And when that happens, we sit up and take notice.

  

  Sometimes it’s hard to keep up, to find that steady ground on which to stand and catch our breath, to find our center and get our feet beneath us. Technology changes are coming at an ever-increasing speed. Political changes are sometimes faster than, or not as fast as, we'd hope. The climate is changing in ways we can't fully predict. Knowing and excepting things will not always be the way they were will help. If we learn not to build our castles on sand dunes, we will be more resilient, and recover more quickly from change, planned or not, in our lives. 

  Why Chapter 3? We like to divide our time into segments, be that our day, our week, our year, or our life.  

  I see the first chapter of my life as the time from when I was born until I graduated from college. It was a time of learning, and growing. A time when everything was new and changing. It was what I expected and I shifted with those sands easily.

  Chapter 2 spans my working career. I didn't change jobs as often as most people and sometimes resisted it. I started by working for the Department of Defense right out of graduate school, worked a short time in private industry, then returned to the Department of Interior for nearly 29 years. My time there, with the Survey, was always changing and evolving. Each year brought new challenges and changing times. No two were the same. Those who were there before me left, and new faces joined the Center. Times were busy and times were slower. The work was always interesting and carried with it the satisfaction that I was doing something that helped protect lives and property by understanding what had happened in the past, and using that knowledge to predict what would happen in the future. But as steady as those sands have been, the sands there were shifting, too. 

  It comes down to this: My sands, our sands, are shifting. The work at the Survey will continue, just as a highway continues across the landscape. I have chosen to exit the ramp presented to me. The sign beside the road says "Chapter 3" and points in a different direction across a landscape we've not traveled before. The work at the Survey is no less important because I have stepped aside. Many capable and talented people will continue on. My path is a different one now, though I will continue to follow their progress for a long as I can see them, and that will be a long time indeed.

  Edward and I have planned for this for some time. We have set out on this path perhaps a little earlier than others before us. We are ready. The ground is by no means completely solid, but we hope it will be more like the Rockies then Jockey's Ridge. We have set out guide posts to help us on our journey, we have our walking sticks to steady ourselves when we encounter the unexpected, and we are ready for this next chapter in our lives.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

      I took the one less traveled by,

      And that has made all the difference."  - Robert Frost  

-->

Righting The Rock....

  Back in 2000, Edward gave me a rock for my Winter Solstice gift… Not the “wear-it-on-your-finger” type of “rock". A 2200 lb hunk of sandstone. I am a geologist, after all. It was a perfect fit. We had just lost the Canary Island Date Palm in the front yard and we didn’t want to put in another palm, or other tree, as the four oaks we had planted in 1992 had finally started to get big. Another tree would have struggled to get enough light.

  We got the rock from a landscape supply company, the type that sells mostly paving type stones, river rocks and other landscape-y types of stuff.  Edward had gotten a cubic yard of fill dirt after the stump for the palm tree was ground down and with the help of a friend had moved it from the driveway to the spot where the tree had been. We were ready for the stone, which the seller delivered, which was a good thing since we would never have been able to get it home and placed, no matter how many friends we had. They backed the truck carrying the stone to the pile of dirt and slid it off the truck…  Plunk. Sort of leaning and definitely making a statement. I like that. I Am Geologist! See My Rock!

  For the next few weeks as people drove by the house we would get looks. You’d think we’s lit a bonfire in the front yard the way people were rubbernecking. It was great.  

  Over time, though, the pile of soft dirt that the rock sat on settled and the rock settled with it until it was pretty much lying on it’s side. “We should try to stand that up” Edward said one day.  That would have been a trick involving the jeep several heavy tow straps and a "come-a-long” if I could borrow one from work.  But we never got around to it. 

  Then, a while back, we were talking to a friend who salvages exotic wood from urban areas, explaining that we needed to stand up the rock.  "I can do it," he said. "People I know have winches." Cool! But Peter is insanely busy, and didn’t get a chance to come by… until a few weeks ago. Chris, his wife, called us. “Pete is in the area, and has a little free time, they want to come by and right the rock.”  Sure!

  These guys knew what they were doing.  They move multi-ton tree logs for a living, so they had all the right tools. They backed the trailer with the winch into the front yard at just the right angle, hauled the rock upright, shifted the bottom, braced it with some old hunks of cinderblock, that conveniently came out of the mound of dirt it was sitting on, and settled it into it’s new place.  We filled in the back with the dirt that had been in front, packed it down, and 2.5 hours later...done.  

  Awesome.

  We beat the hell out of the ferns growing around it.  They’ll grow back, I’m sure. We have a pile of river rocks out back from old flower beds that didn’t work out.  I may move a bunch of those up to around the rock to help stabilize it even more.  And if I catch the lawn guys, I'll tell them (again) they don’t need to trim the top of the ferns around it. Now that it’s standing upright, the rock will stick well up above anything growing around it.  My very own Stele… nearly 17 years to the day I got it.

  Morgan Henge Rises! (Ok, it's not a henge... but it just sounds too cool.)

We now return you to your regularly scheduled life...

We were lucky...  very, very lucky.

Sunset, Saturday September 9th, two nights before Irma passed over us.

When Hurricane Irma final made her right-hand turn and headed for Florida, she was a strong Category Four storm.  She had just finished a devastating, and I do mean devastating, trip through Barbuda and St Thomas, as well as chewing up Puerto Rico and Cuba.  Now she was setting her sights on us. We had just finished KittenCon V the weekend before. I'd been monitoring the storm, and knew it was something we would have to watch. When the NHC upgraded her to a 175 mph, Category Five storm Tuesday morning, we knew things were about to get serious. 

Edward began taking stock of our hurricane supplies and making a list of all the things we would need to do before the storm got to us. Each item depended on her track, the predictive models and that seat of pants experience of having lived in a hurricane prone region for the last 30 years, or in Edward's case almost his whole life.  

We made the decision early in the week we were staying. Irma was targeting Florida’s east coast, we didn’t expect too bad a storm over here on the Gulf-side of the peninsula.  The worst of the weather would be in the right front quadrant, in this case to the NE of the storm. We would be to the NW, were the winds would be north to south, a good direction for us. 

We didn’t feel rushed. Tuesday evening, we went out for gas and filled the Rav’s tank. We decided not to take the gas jugs. That decision turned fateful, as gas supplies in this area quickly ran out. But by Thursday, it didn’t look like we were going to get any more before the storm got to us. I speculated that it was a combination of the refineries in Texas being off-line from the impact of Hurricane Harvey two weeks earlier, and the news reports from St Thomas beginning to get through. People were taking this storm very seriously. That was both the good news and the bad.

As the week progressed things looked grimmer. With each day, the track nudged further westward until Irma was pointed solidly at us. Edward has a mantra: if the storm is pointed at you 5-days out you’re probably fine. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it doesn't matter. Edward’s list grew larger. He kept adding things that needed to be done, assigning a day for the decision to execute, or stand down, for each one. But there was no standing down. Irma was as determined to pay us a visit as we were to be ready for her. 

Irma Comin’!  

This time of year, we let the stock in our freezers get low. Should we get a storm, we wouldn't have that much to lose if the power was out for an extended period of time. We keep a stock of empty juice bottles in the garage rather than buying bottled water or special containers. The smaller 1.5 liter bottles are a perfect size to freeze, giving us both ice, and later, water. We started freezing those bottles, two at a time, on Tuesday. It takes about 24 hours to freeze a 1.5 jug of water. The ice maker was already going. That takes about 48 hours to make a 2 gallon ziplock bag of ice cubes. 

In 2004 when Ivan set his sights on us, we bought plywood for the windows. Ivan was the third storm of four that would threaten Florida that year. I'd been to a number of hurricane conferences and seen many of the products available for protection from wind driven debris. One product, PlyLox, seemed perfect for us. They required no drilling when installing the boards. It wasn’t until Jeanne threatened the state 2 weeks later that we measured the sills, cut our boards, and covered the windows. We stored those boards in the garage in anticipation of future storms. In 2008 we had new windows installed, windows that were rated for hurricane force winds. Two years ago we considered getting rid of that plywood. But no, we thought, if we get a Category Three storm we'll likely put them up. They'd be extra protection for the windows themselves, while the strength of the widows were what would protect the house. Irma was looking more and more like she was going to make us very glad we still had those boards. 

On Friday morning I took the gas jugs with me on my way to work. There was a chance there would be gas available. The first place I stopped had signs taped to their pumps, but people seemed to be getting gas. Instead of saying they were out, the signs read they only had “regular". Works for me. I filled the two 5.5 gallon jugs after topping off the Rav’s tank. Now we had extra gas.

"We’re Screwed"

On Saturday morning the models could not have been worse. Irma was staying stubbornly pointed right at us. The predicted track would place the storm directly over us at 2:00 am Monday morning. She was expected to swing a little westward and thus stay strong over the Gulf, before making landfall just south of us. A landfall which would not weaken her much before getting here. Winds were expected to be between 130–155 mph. 

By Saturday afternoon we are almost ready. We were finished, save the last few boards and the sliding glass door. We still weren't sure what we were going to do there, we had a few ideas, but nothing definitive. We filled the three liter juice bottles and we set them on the counter to wait for the storm. We’d photographed the house, inside and out, and laid out each account statement so we would have pictures with all the important numbers if we needed them after the storm. The computers had already been back up and shut down, with the hard drives in ziplocks in a Go-Bag. I even went through my jewelry box, picking out those pieces I didn't want to live without. We got out all the flashlights, lanterns and batteries and set them were we could get to them easily. All of the outside furniture and plants had been moved into the garage. Edward had the cooler set out and ready to be stocked before we lost power. There wasn’t much more to do.

Mike called about mid afternoon. He wanted to let us know he was still several hours away from finishing his preparations, but he'd be over later that night, as his evacuation zone was required to be out by that evening. 

We had two options for what it do next. Nap or go help. It really wasn't a question, and we descended on Mike and Julie with work cloths on and work gloves in hand. We didn't even warn them we were coming, we just showed up. They were working on covering their front windows. The rest of the house already had metal shutters installed. Mike was cutting 3/4 inch plywood with a small circular saw that wasn't quite up to the task. So I went back to the house to get our saw, while Edward and Mike finished up the master bath window. Julie moved inside to finish packing what she needed to go stay with her mother. It didn’t take too much longer to cover the last windows, and from a piece of Mike's scrap shutter track we found the solution for our sliding glass doors. When Mike arrived that night, he helped us get the doors covered. We were done and about a ready as we could be.

With the house secure on Sunday there wasn't much to do but wait. We cooked the last of our eggs for breakfast and about noon we made a spaghetti dinner. We figured we'd loose power about 6:00 pm so eating early was a better plan. I walked the neighborhood mid-afternoon in a light rain. Irma had already made landfall at Marco Island as a Category Three storm. It was breezy, but the storm was still several hundred miles south. The world was eerily quite, save a few brave souls venturing out, or finishing preparations.

The lights began to flicker around 8:00 pm. Edward turned the AC off about 9-9:30 pm after having turned it down earlier in the day. At one point we were betting on when we would loose power. Our friends on Facebook even got in the game. We all made sure that everything had a place. No point in trying to find that important item you'd misplaced in the dark. The lights finally went out at 11:30 pm.  I remember many, many times in the past as lights go out, being plunged into complete darkness, our eyes used to bright lights. We all had flash lights at hand, but as I looked up, I could see Mike and Edward do the same, each lit by their device of choice.   

From there the wind only got stronger. We have four large oaks in front, seven pines, and various smaller varieties in the rest of the yard. We couldn't seen them bend with the wind. We couldn't see anything. But there was one big difference in this storm. We had cellular contact with the rest of the world. We watched the radar, checked the models, and texted our very own hurricane expert during the night. We could track the eye of the storm as she moved northward. Irma had stayed inland after landfall, but she was still strong and dangerous.

It was during the height of the storm that Mara decided to make an appearance. She had been under the bed the entire day. At about midnight she came out, settling on the table between the three of us. A little while later she wandered over to the sliding glass doors and wanted to be let out on the porch, as if nothing much more then a summer thunderstorm was raging outside. 

By 1:00 am the eye of the storm was nearly due east of us. She was weaker than the early Sunday morning predictions had estimated she’d be when she got here. She was a weak Category Two, or strong Category One. We debated the location of her eye, and I thought we were getting some of the eye wall winds. But most of the rain was out in front of the storm, making the exact center hard to pinpoint. The strong winds still were coming in bursts, but Edward was considering giving up and going to bed when came the text from across town.  "Big tree in front uprooted and landed on the garage - came through roof". Everyone was ok, including their neighbor, whose house also took it worse than their garage. Amazingly, they still had lights. We were all wide awake again and we were going to be up for a while longer.

We finally gave up around 2-2:30 am.  We all slept in our cloths that night, in case we needed to get up in a hurry.

Daybreak

Dawn was about an hour away when we got up. We went out the garage door and inspected the yard. There were tons of tiny branches down, but only a few big ones. We could see there was no damage to, and no branches on, the roof. All our trees were upright. It was breezy with a light rain. The worst of the storm had passed.

We went back inside and got something to eat while it started to get light. We took down the shutters on the front door and then went for a walk. That's when we saw the tree down about 200 ft south of us, a 50 ft sycamore lying on its side. It had fallen away from the house and the cars had been parked away from the driveway. The only thing it hit was the road.

We checked Heather and Trent's house then walked down to the front of the neighborhood to check on the roads. People were already out and driving even though the curfew had not yet been lifted. Many people were out checking their property. Most called greetings and asked if everything was OK. Most folks had come through just fine. Mike’s house was fine too, only having lost a few shingles and having a small tree blow over.

In the end, we came through the storm without any damage. We spent two mornings cleaning up the yard and an afternoon cutting up the small tree that blew over in Mike's yard. We were only without power for 4.5 days. Others in the county got their power back 7 or 10 days later. We didn't loose food, thanks to Mike's loan of the generator after his power was restored.  

Others were not as lucky, like our friend with the crushed garage, or my colleague with a branch through her roof.  

Edward did more work than I did both in prep and cleanup. He also got to sit at home after the storm with no AC, tending the generator. He deserves a medal for that. I went back to work on Wednesday, where there was power and AC.

Things could have been much worse. A few days after the storm we drove through the park behind the house. Park personnel were clearing a section of the trail of debris. As we drove by, we noticed several large pine trees had been snapped off 6-12 feet above the ground. The only thing that does that are severe straight-line winds, or a tornado. Those could have been our trees. That could have been our yard. They could have landed on our roof.

Irma is a storm that will go into the history books. She was one of three Category Four or stronger storms to make landfall in the US and its territories in the same year, something that’s never happened before. As we watched Irma approach we couldn’t help be think back to another 2004 hurricane. Charley had moved into the Gulf as a Category Two storm before explosively intensifying to a Category Four in just three hours. Charley was also headed right for us. Fortunately for us, he turned inland sooner than predicted, sparing the Tampa Bay area.  In hind site, we were not prepared for Charley. Had he stayed on his predicted course we would have had significant damage. Irma's deviation from her predicted track was subtler, but had a greater effect. By making landfall in Marco Island, rather than Port Charlotte or Madeira Beach, she weakened enough to take away some of her punch. By passing east of us we also avoided some of the heaviest rain and strongest winds. And while we considered ourselves ready for Irma, there is no telling what would have been different if she had maintained full strength out over the Gulf before getting here. To say we we lucky is a bit of on understatement. Yet lucky we were. Things could have been much, much worse.

I don’t think we’ll forget Irma anytime soon. It had been 11 days from the time we started preparing for her arrival to the time we were finished cleaning up and our power was restored. But we weren’t done yet. Edward and I spent the next week accessing what we did right and what could use improvement. Neither of us felt we were unprepared, nor did we feel caught off guard. Even so we decided that now, while we were thinking about it, was a good time to update a few supplies and replace some that failed in order to be ready for the next one, which may not have been long in coming. Maria was already following closely in Irma's tracks and we wanted to be ready in case she, too, determined that Florida was the hot spot to be in the Summer of ’17.

“Lucky" Photographer...

I’ll never be a professional photographer. I just don’t have it in me to walk up to total strangers and ask if I can take pictures. It’s even more unnerving when that stranger is a St. Petersburg Police Officer outside of the headquarters in downtown. But that’s what I did. “Hi. I have a photo assignment, can I take some pictures of your car?” "Do you have a class assignment?” Well, not really for a class, but it was an assignment, if only from myself.  

That’s how I found myself in the dirt parking lot with all the off duty police cruisers on Tuesday morning.

Honestly, the officer was very nice, and since she needed to test her lights anyway, she turned them on for me. “It works better at night,” she said. Makes me think she’d had this request before. 

I still did everything wrong. My camera was still set up for the previous shoot. Wrong shutter, wrong aperture. Bad light, bad exposure, really nervous. All my classic mistakes. And trying to capture flashing lights is harder then it looks. I think I only got one shot with both lights lit. But that’s what I had. Maybe a little post-processing could save it.

Make that a lot of post-processing. I cropped the picture a little, changed the exposure level some. Then started playing with filters. I settled on one called “Oil Paint”. Oil Paint smoothed a lot of the gritty dirt on the car roof, as well as the mount for the light bar. The trees in the background warped a little becoming somewhat surreal. The picture is for Edward’s poem Remember.  The quality is somewhat dream like, the way memories sometimes are. The only other adjustment was to tone down some blown out spots in the red light. Not the best way to do it, but in this case I was able to take a bad shot and turn it into something kind cool.

I consider myself to be more of a “lucky" photographer. I’m trying to change that. I’m trying to be more prepared when I go out for a shoot. Trying to get the angles and framing right the first time, as well as the lighting. But I don’t think I’ll ever get past the part where I have to ask people about taking pictures. I’m just not that extroverted. Maybe that, too, will come with practice, but I don’t think so.

Read Edward's poem "Remember" here.