What Cost This Tragedy?

Serendipity is currently my friend today.

I planted vegetables way late. I was cringing. BUT. planted them the day after a big rain. The day after I watered. Yesterday and today we have had three more gentle rains.

I know when my kids were growing up, it seemed sometimes they grew an inch in a week. Considering how tall both ended up, maybe they did, but now, I am looking at vegetables and flowering plants and vines.

With the rains, they all are bigger every day. Really. Wonderfully.

So far the dogs have not lept in and dug them up in the raised bed. This year, I put the short wire fence inside the timbers of the bed, making it a more challenging leap. I also took care to make sure the tomato cages had a tine facing the outside. It's only five days. We'll see.

Last night, we had a mild rain that kept coming through the leaves, tinkling in the birdbath. Early yet, so sleepy calls from some birds in the dark. It was fragrant, musical, comfortable (70s) and wonderful.

I wished then for all those who have gone through horrific storms this week to heal to the sweet, rhythmic drip of the rain, distant and gentle rumble of thunder, and the sweet percussion of leaves brushing in a gentle breeze.

There will be trees again, grass, flowers, even vegetables. Houses will sprout again, businesses regrow.

\When I was a child in New Mexico, I remember the forest fires that destroyed so many acres. For years, it was black ash. Finally scrub oak. Then pinon, and now,50 years later, finally pines are beginning to grow again. It will take another lifetime.

With the tornadoes, times are different. They rebuild more quickly. How is Joplin doing?

I can't remember how many died in Joplin. Can you? My God. 158 deaths, more than 1,100 injured. I googled.

My blog has taken a twist, because I also decided to mention the F4 tornadoes that obliterated so much of Wichita Falls, Tx., April 10, 1979.

I remember that so well. I had just left journalism. I seem to remember there were three tornadoes, only a few miles long, more than a mile wide, F4. I verified all that. What I found eerie is that as I researched, I found costs, devastation photos, economic impact statements. I googled "death toll, 1979 Wichita Falls tornado" but even that didn't get me to the information until the fourth try.

They lost 42, more than 1,000 injured.

I am a little shaken.

So. Apparently we build some better. We have better alerts.

Maybe. Hope so.

I know I'm not a business person. Always have known that. But when I research death tolls for fairly recent events and get the money cost easily and the human deaths only with effort--oh.

Things are worse than I thought.

Move Evokes Nostalgia

My wrist is healed and I have moved. Lots of changes. I moved across town. I think of good friends who moved last year from Texas to Oregon, and I am awed. They are my age--mid-sixties--and say they are glad they moved when they did. They aren't sure they could have made it if they had made the move in another few years.

I think at my age a lot of people upsize to their dream house, or they start downsizing as I have done. Of course, there are the folks who simply stay put and will for the next 20 years or more, or move laterally, to another location with about the same space/cost.

More about that later.

One of the items I moved is a cheap, scruffy pottery plate which currently is sitting under my ficus plant in the window. But I smile when I look at it, because it came into my possession on New Year's Eve, 78/79, with the remains of the evening's baked Alaska on it. That was quite an evening. Beef tournedoes. Pouilly fuisse wine. dancing. and one whale of an ice storm. Memorable. and when I see or handle that plate, I remember it. Actually, the plant resting on it is from a farewell brunch at my old office. The brunch was a surprise, and I understand the food was great, but I missed it because my car caught fire on the way home and I was busy shopping for a replacement. 1)I learned that antifreeze thrown on an engine fire will put the fire out. 2)I learned car dealers will send a car to pick you up when you tell them you have to buy TODAY. A bedraggled ficus on a scruffy plate. See what rich memories they evoke! I could do complete and lengthy blogs on both stories, and probably I will later.

I've divested myself of a large number of personal belongings, sometimes painfully. I don't have much at this point, but there are memories associated with every single thing I have. My sons and daughter-in-law did the packing and moving (I was still exhausted when we were finished)and we all enjoyed looking at some of the photographs. I have some that go back three generations. Maybe more. We showed my son's 5-year-old daughter a picture of her daddy at about her age and told her it was him. She examined the picture thoroughly, then said decisively, "No, it's not."

This place is smaller than my last, and I am determined to keep every thing I brought somehow. I still have unpacked boxes and it has been more than a week. (sigh) But I can't unpack right now--I have to go exercise, and then a neighbor is coming over and then I have to fix supper, and I have to read sometime, don't I?

more later. FYI, the best keepsake from this move is the love my family has shown me, and I don't have to store that anywhere. I just keep giving it back, getting it back, and giving it again.