Now that it is over and I had a day to contemplate what it all meant I have some thoughts to share with you. We experienced the thing here in Mathews County, Virginia about 50 miles up Chesapeake Bay from the mouth of the Bay. Maps show that were we to get a direct hit from a class 4 hurricane most of our little County would be under water from the surge. We are Virginia's second smallest County and do not have a single stop light in the entire county. The VDOT crews were busy for weeks before the hurricane trimming the wires near the power lines. Ours are under ground. Nevertheless our power went out just after noon Saturday near the time when the storm made landfall in North Carolina more than a hundred miles from us. We were on generator power for about 32 hours. I learned some things about myself and also have some general thoughts to share with you if you read on.
I am not used to thinking of myself as a "typical" American in that I have tried for a long time (I am 75) to live without excess use of resources. I did not own a car until I graduated from college in 1957 and went to Quantico to do my USMC officer's basic training. After that, starting in 1960 when my military obligation ended, I rode a bicycle to work for over 40 years. I learned to take "Navy" showers as a Midshipman in college on my cruises so I kept that up all my life. Get in the shower, wet yourself and turn of the water as you soap up, then quickly rinse.
My favorite vacations were tent camping and hiking in the Rockies or the White Mountains. Now I live in the woods and "going camping" seems unnecessary especial since I am a bit crippled and can no longer hike. In fact I barely can walk and use a cane.
That is why this hurricane was a sobering thing for me. First of all, even though I have been through hurricanes before, this one worried me. Maybe it was all those maps showing that most of the county would be under water from the surge if a class 4 storm hit us head on. Maybe it was the tree that fell 5 feet from the house during Isabel some years back. Maybe it is just that I am getting old and have changed more than I realized. In any case I was nervous.
When the power went out so early I got more nervous. I got the generator working and other than learning that the cord I used from the generator to the plug for the pump for the well was too long to allow enough current, I had few real problems. We were never really out of water. The generator provided light for a couple of rooms and kept the refrigerator and freezer going.
We did not have A/C and I found myself sitting in sweat a good share of the time. When I first came to Virginia in the 1950s no one had A/C. Now I was feeling really uncomfortable without it. I didn't have to have all this stuff when I used to tent camp. Now it seemed so important. That bothers me. It bothers me because I have come to take all this stuff for granted and I have lost sight of how much of the shrinking resources of this planet I am consuming. I feel like I need to to this to live comfortably. How did I get here? How did I let the change occur and not notice? How does what I am relating pertain to what we face as a Nation and a Global set of Nations on this planet? Am I making too much out this? I think not.
Let's suppose we had a revolution tomorrow and the "good guys" took over and started to set things straight. Let's say that we could feed everyone at some decent level and we could clothe and house them. Let us say we could provide some nice things for everyone. What level of life would we be able to sustain? What comfort level could we expect?
These are probably silly questions since there is no way I can envision any of us giving up what we would have to in order to let such a dream be reality. All my life I have been part of a Nation that has used world resources way beyond what its "fair share" is whatever that might be. Now I endure a day or so of mild hardship and barely feel like I could tolerate it for any length of time. Even at that I ran a generator used gallons of gasoline and was thinking I was experiencing hardship. Most of the world would have found what I was doing luxury!
So maybe it takes a hurricane to make me rededicate myself to making the world a better place for all humankind and to begin to live the politics I write and talk about. Maybe also I should acknowledge that I am really not that different from the right wingers who are open about their greed.
So I wrote this diary to ask you to help me answer some of these questions Irene made me ask myself. What do you think?