Lift Up Your Hearts!

Thursday, September 23, 2004. 6:30 p.m.  Janet, now back in school, said she misses getting regular updates from us via the website. Jeanne seems to agree, because the latest forecast has her paying us a visit this Sunday. It's not likely—this time—to interfere with the Daleys' flight tomorrow. (This visit is the rescheduling of the one that was cancelled by Frances.) But what it will do for the rest of their visit remains to be seen. I reiterate my statement: Just because we went through one hurricane with Janet, I don't feel any obligation to even things up by going through one with Heather. "Jeanne, Jeanne, go away..."; after what Ivan did, I won't even think about "come again some other day."

We took the plywood off our windows this weekend. It's neatly put away in the garage, behind a lot of boxes. But it can all come out again, and go back on the windows.... Maybe it would be good if you'd add us to your prayer list permanently—or at least till the end of hurricane season. :)

Wednesday, September 22, 2004. 9:15 a.m. Jeanne is dancing around and driving all the computer models crazy, and more storms are tumbling along around her.

Sunday, September 19, 2004. 11:45 p.m. Here is a picture from Heather & Jon’s website of what Ivan did to Pittsburgh.

Saturday, September 18, 2004. 6:00 p.m. Ivan is hitting Philadelphia hard, too. NMKB lost a tree, found a couple of leaks thanks to the enormity of the rains, and were without power and phone for a while.

Saturday, September 18, 2004. 7:45 a.m. Jeanne's projected path is looking much nicer for us, and Hurricane Karl, though stronger, is comfortably far away.

9:45 p.m. The news stories I could find online were slow to provide information, but finally it got Google’s attention. Check out KDKA for Pittsburgh news. Jon said that Bigelow Blvd. was closed due to mudslides.

7:30 p.m. We just heard from Heather. Jon made it home safely. He was cold and wet, but now he’s warm and dry. :)

Friday, September 17, 2004. 6:15 p.m. Jeanne is doing her best to assure us that no storm is too small to pray about. At one point, one of the computer models had her looping around and crossing Florida a couple of times! Now the models disagree wildly, though the outlook seems better.

Friday, September 17, 2004. 6:15 p.m.  As devastating as Ivan has been, I had though I was done with personal commentary on this hurricane. I was wrong. It’s already reaching up to Pittsburgh, which is enduring flooding, evacuations, and power outages. People are stranded at work because so many roads are closed. Jon is walking home, expected to be about an hour, except that he is stopping to help various people along the way. Theoretically the buses are running, but there’s not much point in catching one, since the traffic is mostly not moving. With the temperature about 60 degrees, and heavy rain, he’ll be ready for the hot chocolate Heather is fixing for him!

Thursday, September 16, 2004. 6:30 a.m.  If I'd known that this season's hurricanes were to be of such intense personal interest, I'd have started keeping track with Alex.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004. 6:15 a.m.  The word is that our friend’s family on Cayman Brac fared well, though Grand Cayman (which was in a less favorable position) was hit hard. They say that Ivan is the sixth most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record.

Monday, September 13, 2004. 9:30 a.m. I said that the flooding doesn’t directly affect us, but that’s not quite true. We’ve been making more of an effort to conserve water—a good thing anyway—in order to reduce the load on the sewage treatment plants, which in turn reduces the quantity of water released into the rivers. It’s sobering to realize that one’s toilet flush could contribute to the flooding of someone’s home. The trick will be to get out of the habit of not flushing every time when we have visitors and when we go to other people’s houses. :)

Sunday, September 12, 2004. 10:00 p.m.  It was good to go to church today. We had only missed a week, but it felt like a year. I wonder if Albert Einstein considered the fact that hurricanes distort time.

Floodwaters have not yet crested from Frances. Lake Monroe is up to the sea wall in Sanford, and is expected to flood even without any more rain. We stopped at the gas station after church to top up the tank, even though it was more than half full. It will be a while before we take the availability of fuel for granted again. Supplies are still limited: the station where we stopped had only regular grade gas.

Nonetheless, today felt almost normal. Maybe too normal. Ivan’s predicted path is comfortingly away from us, but we know all too well how fast that can change, so it doesn’t pay to get presumptuous. Good night, all!

9:30 p.m.Now the focus of our prayers turns from Jamaica to the Cayman Islands. We have a friend who is from Cayman Brac, and her family still lives there. She says that when the hurricanes come, “you pray a lot and have lots of food and clean water and put up the shutters.” Some of the families have personal caves in the mountain to retreat to if necessary, which gives them an advantage in personal safety over Floridians, who don’t even have basements. But water and wind are always a huge worry, especially with a monster as powerful as Ivan.

We tried to break out of hurricane mode and do something normal tonight, travelling to the Orlando Science Center to take in a movie about Mt. Everest. But a power surge had taken out some of the equipment, which—for reasons best known to the engineers—made it impossible to run both the movie and the air conditioner. The air conditioner won, so we went home.

Saturday, September 11, 2004. 8:00 a.m. As we wait, keeping a weather eye on Ivan, the floodwaters keep rising from the damage done by Frances. It is not a direct problem for us, here on our little hill, but is an awful mess for many Central Floridians. As true as it may be, this is a cruel time to point out, as some have, that this is only what we can expect if we persist in paving over natural drainage areas and in building homes and businesses on former swampland. Today’s Wizard of ID says a lot: