It's 1:45 in the afternoon, and the sky is pink, and it's raining ashes. There are ashes falling on my house and car and deck.
It's so dry that the wood on the deck has cracked, the nails have separated from the wood, the boards are curling up like old shoes.
Linda and I have bought face masks.
She sits in her dean's office with her blue mask on.
Tomorrow, she is taking another mask in to give to her secretary who has lost the ability to speak because of the smoke and ash in the air.
We have four air purifiers running all the time--and it's not enough.
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10 comments:
I dig the photo montage, John! It's great having you in the blogosphere--I've had so many amazing conversations here. Welcome!
Thank you for opening my eyes, for making this personal.
Jim, the newshound in our family, especially since he retired, said that he'd been hearing of the fires for a while now. I'm praying for a frog strangler, for gully washers....
Hi, John. Good to see your blog. I am really sorry about the fire. That is just awful. Out where my mother lives in AZ they have fires every year from lightning strikes or idiotic campers, but you kind of expect that in such a dry climate. I never thought of GA as dry, in any sense.
Keep cool and "unlit", if possible. I hope it all stops, without a hurricane to stop it.
Hi, and thanks for reading my post, and the encouraging words.
This place is dry. And usually it's not. Most of the time it's like 90% humidity. It's the only place I've ever lived where I've seen adults walking around in public with towels around their necks. But this year it's dry. Hasn't rained more than a penny's worth of rain in 2 months. The geraniums I've got in pots on my back porch have leaves that feel like old old paper, so dry.
I will send you some of our Akron humidity. That is really scary!
I am glad to see your blog. Michael sent it to me today. And I want to thank you for sending me your book Lightning and Ashes...I read it as soon as I got it. I found it to be emotional and realistic at the same time. I felt like I was with you as you wrote it. Such a great gift you have. I need to say more but time is limited. I will see Michael in Illinois this weekend. I think it is ironic that you and your family are now living in a climate filled with ashes. There has to be an analogy somewhere. John
There's an owl outside my house having a conversation of some kind. He sounded optimistic. I like to think he knows something about the weather. I bought a CD of nature sounds at a pawn shop for a dollar. It's comforting to listen to the rain, especially when it cost so little. Sympathetic magic.
John, thanks for the note about the book. The ashes? I do think about them, and what it must have been like for them to always be falling and knowing that what was burning was once alive and human.
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