THERE IS NOTHING TO SAY

http://www.wwltv.com/sharedcontent/breakingnews/slideshow/083005_dmnkatrina/22.html

Things I Am Grumpy About Tonight

Everything pales in comparison to the news out of Louisiana and Mississippi.  A man who lost his grasp on his wife's hand as the waters rose.  Families crouched on what few square feet of roof they retain above the water as helicopters try to rescue them.  Dogs entangled and electrocuted in downed wires.  Reporters breaking down in tears and frustration.

I write that not because you don't know all about it, too,  but because I want to clarify that I know that I can be as shallow and self-centered as the next person.  Here, in no particular order, is what's on my mind today:

*** A conversation last night one of my very best friends, a true soul companion for the last two decades, who said, as I reported on NOLA, "Well, I guess everything happens for a reason."

"NO, IT DOESN'T!" I sputtered.  "Everything is chaos."

I've been thinking about that conversation all day. I don't believe that everything  happens for a reason, or that "God is in control," or anything remotely similar.  I've been really depressed to realize what different wavelengths my friend and I are on.

*** My daughter's loss of probably almost her entire wardrobe to the hurricane, since she left most of her earthly possessions in a dorm at Tulane.  My daughter's sizes range from 0 to 3; every pair of pants she owns is a hard-won treasure.  It could take two years to provide her with  four pairs of pants. 

*** Something that happened at work yesterday.  It made me so unhappy that I considered quitting on the spot.  It was a little thing, but it was an integrity thing to me.  And my mentioning it has resulted in some Important People distancing themselves from me.

***  AAAAAUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH.  A year's work -- that's what the college admission process is.  And where is my child?  Not at college, that's for sure.

*** Parents who cannot utter a single sentence on any topic without mentioning their child's honors status and scholarship level.

*** Grief.  I have just felt awash in it recently.  My brother and I were talking about our dad the other night, utterly devastated by the recent cancer diagnosis of the wife of a friend of 50 years' standing.  We talked about his loss of three wives and a son, wondering how much one person is supposed to endure.

Some days I just feel so utterly out of it, like there is no one in the world who sees things as I do.  There is a lot of darkness out there.

It's hard to believe that only two weeks ago our biggest concern was making it to the right destination on time for the best PEI sunset.

A Day

My school opened today.  Exhausting.  The administration insists on opening "orientation" days with 15 minute classes -- barely enough time to toss the books at the kids and say, "Oh yeah, if you don't know me, I'm Ms. C."  The kids are mostly lost and the teachers are mostly frazzled. 

My own grad school class started tonight.  It's actually an undergraduate class with a few of us old folks in there -- but it's the one chance this year to study Ignatian Spirituality under one of the world's foremost experts and most gracious of men.  Let's just say that undergraduates have a whole different level of energy as night falls than their -- ahem -- elders do!

Meanwhile, my mind and heart have been in Louisiana today.  My family in Baton Rouge lost power this afternoon, so I told them to call back about now, after I would have had a chance to catch up on the internet and Weather Channel, so that I can tell them what's going on where they are.  I was particularly taken with these portions of a CNN.com report:

<<A public health expert said New Orleans residents who return to their homes would face "a wilderness" without power and drinking water that will be infested with poisonous snakes and fire ants.

"We would really encourage people not to come back for at least a week," said Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center and director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes in Baton Rouge.

Van Heerden ticked off the problems anyone returning to the city would find: "no sewage, no drinking water, contamination, threat of rapid increase in mosquitoes, roads are impassible, downed power lines everywhere, trees, debris from houses in the roads, no way to go shopping, no gas."

The water also has dislodged fire ants and thousands of snakes -- including poisonous water moccasins -- from their homes.

"If you came back, you would be coming literally to a wilderness," he said. "Stay where you are, be comfortable; nothing's going to change. If your house is gone, it's gone. If you come back in a day or a week, it's not going to make any difference.">>

If you are so inclined, this would be a good time to make a donation to the Red Cross.  My family will be able to come home eventually to a house with roof, plumbing, and sewer system intact, but many, many folks have not been so lucky.

In the meantime, a look at a moment in less traumatic waters:

Sanderling, Cavendish Beach, Prince Edward Island

North Cape Sunset *** PEI

Katrina Update

My family is more or less safely ensconced with friends in Baton Rouge -- my father's high school roommate lives there and, thankfully, he and his wife epitomize southern hospitality.  Their college senior grandson is in town with a friend, so there are other young people for the kids to hang out with, and they are at his house now, helping to move stuff indoors and do what they can to secure property against the winds and rains.  Phone service is erratic at best, so I may not know more until -- well, until I know more.

And yes, Paul, I am glued to the weather channel.  I do now know a lot more about barometric pressure and cities located below sea level than I did yesterday. 

My husband and one son are kind of itching to leave, but have concluded that there isn't much point -- they could only drive west, the opposite direction from home, and only at about 25 mph.  I think they should stay and see where the hurricane hits -- it's possible that the college will close for weeks or months and they will need to go back and retrieve what they unloaded yesterday.  (No, I have no idea why they unloaded anything at all.  Irrepressible human optimism, I guess.)

If you're still reading, I sure wish you'd scroll down and take a peek at my heron photo.  I hope that his southern relatives have moved to a safer haven than the Gulf of Mexico.

Katrina College Orientation

My daughter, with the help of her father and brothers, has just moved into her new dorm room.  Here's how it's going so far:

<<Message regarding university closure:

In response to Hurricane Katrina's shift to the west, Tulane University will close as of 5 p.m. today, August 27. Classes will resume on Thursday, September 1. Tulane employees should report to work on Wednesday, August 31. Essential employees should contact their supervisors immediately regarding their work schedule.

New students arriving on campus for Orientation today should refer to this website for special instructions.

Everyone should begin implementing their personal hurricane plan now. >>

And. . .

<<New first-year students who are arriving on campus today should make plans to leave campus as soon as possible.

If you can leave with your parents today, do so.

If you have friends or relatives with whom you can seek shelter, do so now.

Students who are unable to leave New Orleans should contact their Resident Assistant immediately for university assistance.

No students will be allowed to occupy residence halls after 6 p.m. today.>>

I don't remember this kind of excitement on my own opening day.

Fishing

Great BLue Heron  *****  Northport Harbor, Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island is a low key kind of place.  In fact, it might just define "low key."  Life on the Island, for both people and birds, is nothing remotely like life here.

I've just finished a week of teacher events and preparations for school, which begins on Monday, and the intensity of our meetings has left no doubt that summer is behind us.  I'm not sure why this year feels so much more frenetic and demanding than the last few but, fow whatever reason, the administration and department chairs seem positively driven.

As I write this, the rest of my family is headed straight for the hurricane, which itself seems to be headed straight for New Orleans, where Tulane University is supposedly hosting freshman orientation for the next few days.  I suppose that if the university decides to evacuate itself, my daughter will experience an orientation to remember forever. 

So I'm kind of tense and kind of lonely.  Last night I dealt with myself by scrubbing down the bathroom at 11:00 p.m.  And I continue to be so lucky -- I have a whirlwind of papers tumbling off the dining room table to deal with, so I can stay busy well past midnight if I so choose.

Of course, I can always hone my procrastination skills by catching up on journals.

Not Here

Prince Edward Island National Park

100

I woke up the other morning to nearly 100 great blues fishing the harbor outside our deck in Northport Harbor, Prince Edward Island.

I have some pictures of which I am very proud, but it's obvious that I have some work to do in learning how to translate them from my new camera to the computer.   So this one will have to do for a few days.

This entry is really just a "Hey."  I've been trying to catch up on my reading and commenting, something of a hopeless endeavor, and I'm going to give up until the end of the week.  I started back to school today (a week of teacher meetings), the pastor and I are trying frantically to put the finishing touches on this fall's adult education program at our church so we can print the brochure, and the lovely daughter goes off to college day after tomorrow in the company of her father and brothers. 

Ahhh.....from the company of herons to the company of high school students.  Not quite the same.

P.S.  It's a raven.  Huge bird with shaggy throat feathers (not visible in the particular photo I chose.)

Ubiquitous

Denizen of Prince Edward Island

Another Era

Green Gables  *****  Prince Edward Island

Getting Over Myself (See Previous Entry)

West Point Lighthouse  *****  Prince Edward Island

Oh Yes, Airline Travel: Thunderstorms!

Friday 11 AM     Leave Halifax Hotel.

Friday 12 PM     Arrive Halifax Airport.

Friday   2 PM     Board plane bound for Toronto.

Friday   5 PM     Spend some time in air and on tarmac on detour to Montreal.

Friday   8 PM     Disembark in Toronto after 45 minutes circling airport and 45 more on tarmac.  Connecting flight has been cancelled.

Friday 8:15 PM  Get in Wrong Line Number 1.

Friday 9:15 PM  Get in Wrong Line Number 2.

Friday 10 PM    Exhange angry words with Air Canada ticket agent but procure reservation for next day.

Friday 11 PM    Shuttle to hotel reserved by Air Canada.

Friday 12 Midnight      Register at Hotel despite no call having been forthcoming from Air Canada.  We are fully equipped for the evening with toothbrushes and little else of use.

Saturday 9 AM       Hotel Limo drops us at wrong terminal.

Saturday 9:15 AM  Get in Wrong Line Number 3.

Saturday 10 AM     Shuttle to correct terminal

Saturday 10:30 AM      Locate luggage.

Saturday 10:40 AM      After 4 tries, find a customs agent who will permit us to go through customs on the basis of last night's boarding passes, enabling us to escape 3 hour line (Wrong Line Number 4) for new boarding passes.

Saturday 11AM     Find an efficient and knowledgeable Air Canada rep who zips through several waiting passenger crises in record time.  We have boarding passes and our luggage is on its way!

Saturday 12:15       Passengers asked to go back to lounge because the plane's stairs refuse to attach to the plane.

Saturday 12:45 PM  We are on our way home.

Saturday 3 PM  We AND our luggage are home.

We are grateful to Air Canada and its employees for their caution in dealing with massive lines of lightning storms and torrential rains yesterday.

However, it is abundantly clear that never before in its history has the Toronto Airport been closed due to weather delays.  That can be the only possible explanation for the too-limited numbers of  poorly trained and dramatically ill-informed staff on duty who sent countless customers to the wrong lines, the wrong terminals, and the wrong phones.

We were not the lady trying to meet "the love of her life" in Boston for his 10 day leave who was informed that she would need to wait 2 full days for another flight, and we were not the couple whose dog had already been abandoned once on a plane in Montreal and whom the airline wanted to send to Edmonton without his humans, who themselves know no one in Edmonton.  I think the lady headed for Boston was trying to find a train, and the dog and his humans spent the night on the airport floor, thanks to the heroic efforts of an Air Canada agent in getting him off the plane.

A shower!  Clean clothes!

Greetings from the Maritimes

The sun streams across the Halifax Harbor below us as a cargo ship starts across the water.  The Citadel stands quietly behind us, its bagpipes silenced until the tourists arrive in a few hours.  Tonight the city will bustle with music and crowds under a full moon, but for now its deserted streets call me for a walk.  The birthday girl, eighteen since 2:01 a.m., sleeps soundly in this luxury executive suite that we acquired quite by accident, thanks to an on-time arrival before our own room was ready. 

It's been an exhilarating week: walks along red-beach coastlines and lupine-strewn dunes, kayaking with cormorants, meanderings through charming cities, boating to an uninhabited island, soaking up history and natural beauty.  I will be inundating this journal with images of lighthouses and beaches for deacdes to come!

 

Coastal Living

OK, fine, you're right, we don't live on the coast or in any other remote approximation of Coastal Living Magazine.

Nevertheless, we did make huge headway in developing our outdoor space this summer.  You really don't realize, after nearly 22 years in a place, that things have gone to hell in a handbasket right under your nose.

The driveway, before and after:

The back drive and Patio Nuevo, designed to accomodate our lives and our very small space, before and after:

 

I'm hoping that by the time I get back next week, the grass will be growing and we can start storing old pavers and adding more flowers!

I Don't Understand Why We're Not Teaching Alchemy in Science Class

I just told Marigolds over at The Blue Voice that I thought Time Magazine is making too big a deal out of idea that people can believe in God and in the science of evolution. 

Maybe I'm completely wrong, though.  I don't think I know anyone well who sees a conflict between the two. And my children have been blessed with science teachers in both public and private schools who simply do not countenance discussion of creationism or intellient design in science classes.

On the other hand, our state school board has introduced some idiocy about intelligent design into the state standards, thereby rendering our already dismal overall school record even less competitve in the context of the worldwide community.  And I do know a couple of people in real life, and have come across many more online, who are under the misapprehension that the magnificent poetry and mythology of Genesis I is reducible to a third grade science text.

So maybe I should be more concerned.  Herewith, the best cartoon I've seen on the topic today:

Fundamentalist Theocracy

I do recall discussing Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Alchemist" in American Lit in college.  It's clear that we need to move that discussion into high school Chem so that the kiddies can waste time debating the relative merits of turning base metals into gold as opposed to learning the science of chemistry.  I'm sure one is a good as another.  After all, no less a personage than our fearless and Yale-educated Commander in Chief has noted that "part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought."

P.S.  I finally got the Time Magazine story to open.  It includes the following vignette:

"Sometime in the late fall, unless a federal court intervenes, ninth-graders at the public high school in rural Dover, Pa., will witness an unusual scene in biology class. The superintendent of schools, Richard Nilsen,will enter the classroom to read a three-paragraph statement mandated by the local school board as a cautionary preamble to the study of evolution. It reads, in part:

Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence ... Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. The reference book Of Pandas and People is available for students to see if they would like to explore this view ... As is true with any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind."

OK, maybe I am about to develop some serious concern.  If our school board mandated the reading of that drivel, I would personally lead the next election charge against them.

Abegweit

The Mi'kmaq, who lived on what is now called Prince Edward Island before Europeans arrived, called it Abegweit ("cradled on the waves"). According to legend, the god Glooscap finished painting the beauties of the world and then dipped his brush into a mixture of all the colors and created Abegweit, his favorite island.  http://www.abegweitfirstnations.com/

Abegweit was sighted by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and was probably visited frequently by French and Basque fishermen in the 17th century, but Europeans did not settle there permanently until the second decade of the 18th century.
http://www.gov.pe.ca/infopei/index.php3?number=19671&lang=E

The island appears under the name Île de Saint Jean in Champlain's narrative (1604) and on his map (1632), but that name is probably of earlier origin. After its acquisition by the British in 1759 the island was known as St. John's Island until the name was changed in 1798 to honour Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (1767-1820), father of Queen Victoria, then in command of the British forces at Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The first Europeans to settle Prince Edward Island came from France in 1720 and were quickly joined by a small group of Acadians from Nova Scotia.  Just prior to the beginning of the Seven Years War with France in 1756, the expulsion of nearly 14,000 Acadians from Acadia (Nova Scotia) was begun at Grand Pré on September 10, 1755, and continued for the next deacdes.  Some fled to Prince Edward Island; many went south or were forced back to France.  Some managed to stick it out, and some returned.   By 1800, some 8,000 resilient Acadians were eking out a living in the Maritime provinces, 8,000 were surviving in Québec, and some 10,000 in Louisiana, the latter giving rise to “Cajun culture.”   http://collections.ic.gc.ca/heirloom_series/volume5/258-263.htm

 

Hmmmm...can you tell that I teach history?  I expect to return with a huge pile of materials for adding a week on the Canadian Maritimes to my 8th grade class.  And my daughter, who will travel from the northern land of the Acadians in mid-August to the land of the Cajuns at the end of August, will begin her college career with a real sense of the history of the people among whom she is going to spend four years.

I'm struck as I write this by how the coastal places I love have been home to so much tempestuous history as cultures have crashed against each other.  In St. Augustine, home to the Timucuan, the first Spanish settlement appeared in 1565 and became a battleground among Spain, France, and England. 

(Many Americans are unaware that the oldest continuous European city in the Americas is St. Augustine, not Jamestown or Pl ymouth, just as they are unaware that the oldest continuous city of all in what we now call The United States is Acoma Pueblo.  History is, indeed, written by the victors.)

And for me, personally?  Ahhhhh, a place called "cradled on the waves"  ~  how could I not feel the call?

Upbeat

I just discovered that the dog peed all over the sunroom floor. 

But then as I took the bucket of water outside to dump, I discovered my son's suitcase sitting on the back porch.

(We learned last night that it had taken a shortcut to Chicago, thanks to the Brits.  OK, fine; I'll be in Chicago at the end of September.  But I suspected that the suitcase wouldn't stay there.  It seems to like to travel.)

Now there is just the most horrific rash all over his hands to deal with -- he's guessing it's a reaction to some Spanish seafood dish.  (And no, Lisa, I'm not blaming the Spanish --or the English --  the same thing happened to him years ago via an IRISH seafood dish in ANNAPOLIS.)

I'm blaming the squid or scallops.

But anyway, I caught the dermatologist the day before he goes on vacation, so I'm not complaining yet.

 

Good-Bye

This has been a brutal week.

Nate, one of the main characters on Six Feet Under, dead.  I haven't yet seen the past three episodes, all of which apparently shudder under the weight of his sudden demise, but I've been reading about them and will probably be able to pick up a tape tomorrow.  Fiction -- yes, of course,  But those of us obsessed with Six Feet Under and its exploration of death and life know exactly what our English teachers meant when they stressed the value of fictional expression.  (Oh, wait -- sometimes I AM an English teacher; I SHOULD know that, right?)

Twenty Marines from a local unit killed in Iraq.  A seemingly endless series of newspaper articles featuring the faces of very young men and their distraught families.  I am listening to the televised community memorial service as I write.

Kat's sister and nephew, killed in a horrific accident last week and eulogized today.

An elderly friend of mine, husband to a former boss, sort of a Peter Jennings of our locale -- someone whose childhood seemed an unlikely launching pad toward greatness, yet one of the most debonair, brilliant, and modest gentlemen in the city, a man whose contributions to his profession and his adopted hometown are immeasurable.  At least he, at 85, could lay claim to a long and productive life.

And now Mr. Jennings himself.  ABC World News has been my evening news for years.  When he announced his lung cancer diagnosis, two weeks after my stepmother died of the same disease, with a treatment plan that sounded suspiciously like the one she had been encouraged to follow,  I knew that his prognosis had to be dismal.  Several times in recent weeks I've wondered how he was doing.  Now we all know.

I suppose it seems odd that I would have started my litany with Nate Fisher, despite the fact that, chronologically speaking, he died first.  Of course, he didn't really die, any more than Hamlet dies, over and over and over, reminding the audience of the torment that all the real-life stricken survivors must endure.

May all those really gone tonight rest gently and in peace.

Here and There

The boy is home from Spain, although his suitcase apparently decided to stay an extra couple of days.  He is unsurprised, having become accustomed to the Spanish version of efficiency, which evidently is something of a contradiction in terms.  It's awfully nice to walk into the house and find him here.  Some of his friends came over tonight, but he's too jetlagged to think of joining them for an evening out.

The daughter is house-and-dog sitting for some of our best friends.  I stayed with her last night, as she had a classmate staying over after a very late night at the movies (see below) whose mother expressed concern about the girls spending the night alone.  (Girls who will be in college in three weeks.)  Today she told me that what the mother really expressed was concern about the neighborhood, and she asked me what I thought she might have meant.  I said that it was a "racially diverse" neighborhood and paused long enough for her to think a minute and then nod her head.  "I thought that's what she might have meant," she said.

Sigh.  Those of us who live here are inordinately proud of the multicultural make-up of our city's population, but many of those who live in the suburb from which her friend ventures forth live there for the express purpose of not living here.

Well, in a few days we will leave here for a week. but not for that reason!  The lovely daughter and I are taking a trip to Prince Edward Island.  I've hesitated to say anything in case it doesn't happen, but we're getting close now.  We had hoped to go to Europe but the airfares this summer are OUTRAGEOUS, so we decided on the Canadian Maritimes, a place I've always longed to go to.  We've spent the past few nights watching straight through eight hours of Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea videos to get ready for the walks we are going to take along island shores next week.

I consider MYSELF inordinately lucky -- to have a daughter about to leave for college who can both dress up (God help us all) for the Rocky Horror Picture Show with her friends AND giggle over the misadventures of Anne Shirley, and who WANTS to take a trip with  her creaky old mama.

 PEI

En Route

My son is en route home from Barcelona!  I talked to him at 4:00 a.m. when he was stuck in Customs Control at Heathrow, and at 6:30 when he was stuck in Security at Gatwick, having actually made his shuttle trip per reservation.  He called back 10 minutes later and said he had accomplished the impossible, getting from Iberia at Heathrow to Continental at Gatwick in three hours, and was the last passenger boarding his flight.  On his way!

After Such Knowledge

When our children were much younger, I once asked a good friend if she were terrified every time hers climbed into someone else's car.  Did she always think, "I might never see them again," when she kissed them good-bye?  No, she said, she never thought that.

I always did.  I always do. 

Not in what I would call a disabling way.  It's true that my boys were two years old before I permitted someone other than my husband or me to drive them anywhere, but that wasn't inconvenient for us.  And I remember the first time -- we were on vacation and my in-laws took them out for an afternoon so we could have some much-needed time to ourselves.  I did make it through the afternoon, although the fact that they were in a car with someone else made it impossible for me to enjoy myself.  The fear that had lurked beneath the surface of my psyche since the moment they were placed in my arms emerged full force that afternoon.

I adapted, though.  Life with three small children and an endless round of soccer games required to me to acknowledge, quite reasonably, that no one else was out to kill my children, and that they were as safe with other parents as other children were with me.  Which was to say, not safe at all, but what can you do?  Just yesterday my response to a friend, who had said with respect to another friend, struggling to get straight answers from an oncologist, that the doctors at that particular hospital are well-trained by their insurance and legal experts to be evasive and noncomittal, was "Oh, for crying out loud, why can't they just be upfront -- after all, he could walk out his front door and get hit by a f---ing car this afternoon!" 

Despite that terrible knowledge, or perhaps because of it, I forced myself to provide my children with what I hoped was a childhood that would convey to them a sense of the wonder and mystery and adventure of the world.  I did not want them to feel the limitations of fear.  I did not want them to feel bound to our way of life, to this neighborhood, to a small circle of expectations. 

I have not been entirely successful.  One of my children  commented a couple of years ago on how I, and they, never separate without a "Goodbye ~ I love you."  They know, without my ever having said it, that I am thinking that each good-bye could be the last one.

And I have  needed help sometimes.  When one of our sons was preparing for his long-planned year abroad immediately after 9/11, I wailed to my husband that we were complete fools, that we had no business letting him get on a plane, much less fly across the ocean.  "There's going to be a war," I said, "and there's going to be a draft, and he's going to get killed before he's 21. And that's all assuming that his plane this week isn't destroyed by terrorists."  "In that case," said my husband, "he needs this year in France now.  He might not ever get another opportunity."

I've had to accept that dichotomy as the price of living.  We must live the lives we want to live.  We might perish in the process.  We will, actually.  It would probably be easier, in some ways, to be less acutely aware of that reality.  There are, I understand from my husband, people who have the pleasure of unbroken nights of sleep on a regular basis.  (He tends to be snoring away at 3:00 a.m., while I am staring at the ceiling or roaming the house, wondering who is doing what in Chicago, or Barcelona, or North Carolina, or wherever it is that our children happen to be.)

There's a certain sense of giftedness to that same painful awareness, though.  It brings with it an attentiveness to the universe as it transforms itself, in all of its minute and passing glory.  I remember a sunrise of a few years ago that was one of the most astonishing extensions of color across the horizon I have ever seen.  I was up to see it due to a set of circumstances so excruciating that I could not imagine surviving until the end of the day -- but I was able to allow that wash of bold reds and pinks and purples and oranges to hold my eye in place.

This all emerges from a difficult confluence of events and stories.  Two days ago, as many of us are sadly aware, journaler Kat lost her sister and nephew to a terrible traffic accident.  That was how my mother and brother  died, nearly 45 years ago.  Ten years later my first stepmother, and maybe five or six years after that my aunt, died equally suddenly and unexpectedly.  For the past day I have thought repeatedly of how my stepsister, in her early 20s at the time, sat out on the porch step after her mother's death and said. "It's SO strange.  Someone is here, and then she's completely gone.  How can that be?"  And how she and her brothers looked at me and my brother, and how she said, "But you already knew that."  A combination of flat recognition and a certain degree of accusation, as though we had been harboring some terrible secret.  I guess we had.

 

That Terrible Rupture

Kat, the generous writer and gifted photographer of Walk With me and From Every Angle, lost her sister and nephew to a dreadful car accident yesterday. 

There are no words for that. 

Everything changes.  People who were here are not.  They are somewhere else. 

There are no words for that.

People disappear from the face of the earth in an incomprehensible instant.  No matter how beautiful, how smart, how talented, how treasured, how needed.

There are no words for that.

Kat shares the beauty of the natural world, from its smallest creatures to its most massive moutains, through her photographs, and hundreds of people from all over the place share in her grief.

There are no words for that, either.

PanLeuk

This is Ivan.  Laid-back, utterly relaxed, sleepy, friendly Ivan.  I don't know whether he's still alive.

The animal shelter where my daughter works discovered that two of its cats had arrived with panleukemia virus this week.  A rapidly-spreading and deadly cat ailment, it always leaves devastation in its wake.  The shelter is closed to cat intakes and adoptions for at least two weeks and the employees are scouring every possible surface with repeated doses of bleach in a desperate effort to keep the cats already in residence alive.  My daughter's scrubs are all covered with bleach spots, her hands are rough and dry, and she is full of apprehension.

It's another situation for heroes, really.  In the face of all that is wrong in the world, a few dozen people are battling for the lives of a few hundred cats, in the hope that somewhere out there waits a loving owner for each of them.

And Ivan?  If the virus doesn't run wild, he has a chance.  He's such a friendly fellow that he spends all of his time in the cat playroom, meaning that he has been isolated from the cages and hallways where the virus is more likely to take hold.  As an adult, he's not likely to be prized by most potential owners, but as long as he stays healthy, he'll survive.

If you're thinking that you need a new pet, then run, don't walk, to your nearest shelter.