9.27.2024 – write name so can be

write name so can be
identified – family
be notified

Taylor County (FLA) Sheriff’s Office – Division of Emergency Management

PLEASE READ ‼️

  • We are requesting that all residents, guests, and evacuees refrain from returning to the area until officially directed by the Emergency Operations Center. This directive will be communicated via social media, news outlets, radio, and emergency alert systems. Returning prematurely poses significant risks due to expected heavy flooding and other hazards. Many roads will be impassable, and there may be downed power lines, fallen trees, and other dangerous conditions.
  • If you or someone you know chose not to evacuate, PLEASE write your, Name, birthday and important information on your arm or leg in A PERMANENT MARKER so that you can be identified and family notified.
  • We ask that you kindly provide the following information so Search and Rescue teams can prioritize these locations:
  • Is the residence inland or on the coastline?
  • Full address of the residence
  • Your name
  • Name(s) of the resident(s) at this location
  • Number of individuals and animals present
  • Contact information for both yourself and the resident(s)
  • Any additional information, such as a recent photograph of the individual(s), disabilities, special requirements.
    Please email this information to: TCEM@Taylorsheriff.org
    Thank you for your cooperation.

We didn’t evacuate nor did we write any identifying information on our arms with a permanent marker.

We lost power on and off over night and now no internet or TV.

We do have cell phone service which is a big plus over last Monday when everything was gone.

And thanks to our cell phone service, tornado alerts, hurricane alerts and flooding alerts kept our alerts alerting all night long.

Then about 4 a.m., the wind started.

That low road of a passing train that folks describe for a tornado but this didn’t last 10 or 20 minutes but hours.

It just roared and if anything got louder like when one of those jets from the Marine Base fly over head.

We got up about 4 a.m. to set things sideways on the floor of our balcony.

Kind of nutty thing to do at 4 a.m. but who wants a wooden rocking chair to be tossed through the front windows.

The next morning came and it was morning.

Still windy but blue sky and a lot of mess.

One of those days we are glad the night was over and also glad we lived in an apartment and didn’t have to get out there and rake.

Got to find a bright side.

9.26.2024 – there’s thought and no thought

there’s thought and no thought
paleness and bloom and bustle
and pleasure and gloom

A Character by William Wordsworth, 1800.

I marvel how Nature could ever find space
For so many strange contrasts in one human face:
There’s thought and no thought, and there’s paleness and bloom
And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom.

There’s weakness, and strength both redundant and vain;
Such strength as, if ever affliction and pain
Could pierce through a temper that’s soft to disease,
Would be rational peace—a philosopher’s ease.

There’s indifference, alike when he fails or succeeds,
And attention full ten times as much as there needs;
Pride where there’s no envy, there’s so much of joy;
And mildness, and spirit both forward and coy.

There’s freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare
Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she’s there,
There’s virtue, the title it surely may claim,
Yet wants heaven knows what to be worthy the name.

This picture from nature may seem to depart,
Yet the Man would at once run away with your heart;
And I for five centuries right gladly would be
Such an odd such a kind happy creature as he.

As printed in The complete poetical works of William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth, 1770-1850 Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin company, 1904.

I was walking through the Mall of Georgia a few years ago and this young woman came out of a store and told me she had something to show me.

I was with some time on my hands so I went along and she had me sit in a chair and held a mirror in front of me and asked wouldn’t I want to look 10 years youngers.

It was funny as she had asked me to take my glasses off and I had to ask her to hold the mirror in front of my nose so I could see myself.

That was how I always saw myself without glasses.

If I wanted to look at myself in a mirror and if I took my glasses I became an impressionistic painting.

Old man in mall could have been the title of the painting.

Either that way or as an extreme closeup so I no idea really of what I look like without glasses.

I looked at myself in the mirror and said to the young woman that I was pretty much at home with my age and my face so no, I didn’t want to look 10 years younger.

She screwed up her face like no one had every told her what to do if someone said no or that they were at home with their face.

But she played a good game and asked if I wanted to see what I would look like.

I shrugged having nothing better to do.

She picked up a tube and squeezed a dab of this cream onto her finger and the she rubbed that stuff all around my right eye.

She said to wait and all the wrinkles would be gone so we waited and she kept looking at my face.

The stuff burned a little bit and I said I wasn’t that thrilled with the process, especially when she got a little more and rubbed it under my eye.

She stood back and grabbed the mirror for me to see myself and again I couldn’t see without my glasses.

“Sir”, she said, “almost all your wrinkles are gone.”

Then she look hard at under my eye.

“Except for this one here, I don’t get it,” she said.

Oh that, I said.

“That’s not a wrinkle. That’s a scar.“

She jumped back and looked at me.

“A scar?”

“Really?”

“Really.“

That took even more off her game but she came back and tried to tell me how much better I looked but I wasn’t buying it.

Especially something at $300 a tube and wore off in a couple of hours.

But I quoted the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson that when a person gets old, they get the face they deserve.

She thought about that and looked at me and look at my scar and kind shook her head.

“You really aren’t interested are you?” she asked.

And we chatted for a few minutes.

She was a recent immigrant from Russia and she loved America and Americans and now she had met someone who was a little bit different.

But she had other people to grab out of the mall and I had to be some where and I got up andI was walking out of the store when she called me back.

“Sir“, she said, holding out the tube of stuff and pointing at my other eye.

“Don’t you at least want to match?”

I marvel how Nature could ever find space
For so many strange contrasts in one human face:

9.25.2024 – walking along when

walking along when
out of orange colored sky
flash, bam, you came by

I was walking along
Mindin’ my business
When out of the orange colored sky
Flash, Bam, Alakazam
Wonderful you came by

I was hummin’ a tune
Drinkin’ in sunshine
When out of that orange colored view
Wham, Bam, Alakazam
I got a look at you

One look and I yelled “timber”
Watch out for flying glass

‘Cause the ceiling fell in
And the bottom fell out
I went in to a spin
And i started to shout
“I’ve been hit, this is it, this is it”

I was walking along
Mindin’ my business
When love came and hit me in the eye
Flash, Bam, Alakazam
Out of the orange colored sky

According to Wikipedia, “Orange Colored Sky” is a popular song written by Milton Delugg and Willie Stein and published in 1950. The first known recording was on July 11, 1950, on KING records catalog number 15061, with Janet Brace singing and Milton Delugg conducting the orchestra.

The best-known version of the song was recorded by Nat King Cole (with Stan Kenton’s orchestra) on August 16, 1950, and released by Capitol Records as catalog number 1184. It first reached the Billboard Best Seller chart on September 22, 1950, and lasted 13 weeks on the chart, peaking at number 11.[3] (Some sites list a 1945 date for this recording, but this is apparently in error.) A number of other singers have recorded it, including Cole’s daughter, Natalie.

Some where there is an interview with Natalie Cole about how as a kid, she loved this song.

Not for the way her Dad sang but for all the wonderful nonsense words.

Who wouldn’t love hearing their Dad sing out Flash, Bam, Alakazam.

It was wonderful enough for us kids to hear our Dad sit at the piano and sing Lulu’s Back in Town.

It was a wonderful life.

A little odd, maybe a lot of odd, but wonderful any way.

The picture is of the night sky over Bluffton, SC and seen while out on a walk with my wife.

One look and I yelled “timber

About my wife, not the sunset.

9.24.2024 – Mr. Baan’s Bar and

Mr. Baan’s Bar and
Mookata Noori Pocha
Fikscue Azizam

Jenny Lawson, in her book, “Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things” , writes that sometimes she needs ‘a word that I just made up for words that you have to invent because they didn’t yet exist.’

With today’s haiku, you might think I am indulging myself with words I had to invent but they didn’t exist.

But you would be wrong.

Today’s haiku is made of names of restaurant’s from the article, “The Restaurant List: Our 50 favorite places in America right now,” in the New York Times.

In the movie, The Natural, baseball player Roy Hobbs, played by Robert Redford, goes out to dinner with an old coach played by Richard Farnsworth who takes him to an Italian restaurant.

The coach starts eating as says something along the lines of, “… you can’t pronounce it, but it sure does eat good.”

I like that line and how it applies to Italian food (and I always have to ask what was Italian food like before Columbus brought tomatoes back from the new world – there was no saucy pizza before 1492 so maybe that is were Neapolitans got the idea … but I digress ) but I am not sure how it applies to restaurant names.

Noori Pocha?

Fikscue?

Azizam?

You can’t pronounce it but it sure does eat good?

Maybe – but I will know never know as I am pretty sure I will never eat in any of these places.

Growing up in a family with 11 kids and a Dad who liked to eat out, eating out was interesting.

Like my own family when we got to seven kids, we didn’t so much go to a restaurant as much as we invaded it.

There was a cafeteria on the North End of Grand Rapids, Michigan were we lived that my Dad enjoyed named Schenshul’s and when Mom needed a break for Sunday Dinner we would all pile in the car and drive up there after church and pile out of the car.

We drove around in what today is called a Van but we called it bus.

In front it had a drivers sear and a passenger seat with the engine … yes the engine … between the two seats.

It had double doors on the passenger side and the last one in sat on a four legged wooden stool that my Dad would place just behind the front seat.

That was with one kid seating on that engine.

In the summer time that engine block would get HOT so my Dad had a couple of wool army blankets that he would set on top of the engine and you would sit on that.

A little kid in summer, wearing shorts, sitting on itchy wool blankets on top of a motor.

No air conditioning back then either.

Don’t even ask me about seat belts.

That was just the transportation.

I am not sure what folks thought watching us all pile out.

I know what they thought of the bus though.

One time there was dent in a door and for reason known but to my Dad, he covered the dent with a stick-on fluorescent flower.

On a trip somewhere at a stop, me and my brothers were wondering around the parking lot waiting for the rest of the family and we heard these two old guys point out the bus and the flower and said, “Stupid Hippies.”

Oh did we laugh and laugh and couldn’t wait to tell Dad when we all got in the car.

No sure what he thought but he left the flower.

Back to Schenshul’s, one time I remember we came through the doors and someone on the restaurant crew looked up and saw us in the line and yelled out, “IT’S THE HOFFMANS! BREAK OUT THE WHITE MILK.”

There were several layers of ‘rites of passage’ when dining at Shenschul’s.

The age when you got your own tray.

The age when you got to push your own tray.

The age when you to order for yourself.

The age when you got to reach over the edge of the cafeteria line and help yourself to a dessert.

The age when you got to CARRY your own tray to the table. This was a biggie and one that my parents were reluctant to okay as there were many close calls.

I myself don’t remember that I or anyone in my family ever dropped or tipped a tray so everything slid off but we saw it often enough.

The final passage was where you got to sit.

Those folks at Schenshul’s would often pull together tables so we could sit in one long group but just as often my Dad would let us take a cluster of tables and we could sit away from our parents.

To sit with the big kids at Schenshul’s.

That’s when you arrived.

9.23.2024 – no phone no wifi

no phone no wifi
a day in the wilderness
back to caveman days

I was working happily at home when around 11 a.m. my wifi went out.

As we get internet service and TV from the same place, I checked the TV and it was out.

No worries, I had a fall back plan when working from home.

The T Mobile unlimited data hotspot.

But my phone showed no bars and displayed the dread SOS that only 911 calls might work.

I checked with our apartment complex office as our service was paid for through our rent but they were out.

I drove to the local library and their service was out but someone with a different phone service was reporting a major outage for the county.

For the first time I knew for sure it was just local.

From the news:

The city of Beaufort said at 11:15 a.m. that its facilities were all without internet services.

Downdetector.com showed outages across South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.

Teachers also reported the internet being down in Beaufort County public schools.

By 12:45 p.m., Sparklight reported that “a portion of Hargray customers are experiencing slow internet or internet outages due to fiber damage caused by a third-party.”

At 4:13 PM EDT, the IT department where I work said that local provider, Hargray, had suffered 4 near simultaneous cuts in their main fiber ring in the Savannah/Pooler areas. A fiber ring can remain operational with 1 cut, but 4 at nearly the same time is catastrophic. The cuts were made by 4 different companies, in 4 different locations, also one I have never seen or heard of before. This Fiber ring supports all Hargray customers phone and internet services, hence the extensive service area affected, (Fl, GA, SC, NC, AL). Hargray has located 3 of the 4 cuts. Crews are onsite and hope to have the 3 cuts repaired in 3-5 hours. They believe this will restore the ring.

By that time I had got in the car and drove until I found cell service which was about 20 miles away.

I was stunned that we could lose both WiFi and Cell service on a perfectly sunny clear day.

As my neighbor put it, back to the caveman days.