Just a bit of news this week. There’s a new magazine article on my website. Cowabunga takes you up the largest river in the eastern Caribbean for a bit of bovine adventure. Check it out at www.jamesewing.com.
The van is working fine. I’ve added about a thousand miles to the clock and am not noticing billows of black smoke following me down I-95. The downside is that it’s only getting about 15 MPG (6.4 Km/l for everyone else) which is about half of what my last car got. The upside is that it has a kick-ass stereo so that if the real downside ever rears its head I won’t be able to hear that anything has gone wrong for about an hour. I made the van legal today by registering it in my “home” State of Florida. Quotes are required as Florida is one of the few States that let you have a “residence” that is about the size of a small sink and in which you never have to actually live. I paid a visit to my “home” today for the first time. It’s a diminutive plastic bin in a pre-fab warehouse on the outskirts of a small town in north-central Florida – right next to the liquor store. This non-present residency is one of the things which makes Florida so popular with retirees, avant-garde gypsies, and foreign terrorists. If I really did live here I’d fit right in.
But I don’t. I’m still working on where I’m going to live, but I like the trend. Several weeks ago I was talking on the phone. “Have you heard of ‘sofa-surfing’?” was put to me. “Sure, hasn’t everybody?” As soon as I hung up I googled “sofa surfing” and found out that this is a potentially viable lifestyle option for somebody whose only other choice was the parking lot at Walmart. Basically, for the equally uninitiated, sofa-surfing requires you show up at somebody’s house with your little pile of stuff, a poor-me expression, and a bottle of wine. They invite you in and then you don’t leave until your welcome is worn so thin you can see light through the weave. The trick is to time your exit so 1) that your friends forget how long you really did stay, and 2) before they open the bottle of wine. If properly executed you will become about as noticeable as an old chair that nobody sits in anymore. By this time your friends no longer recognize your presence and they behave the way they do when alone. Being around one’s friends the way they truly are would make most people pretty uncomfortable. For a writer it’s like tunneling into the mother lode of character traits. This explains why most writers are friendless. Sofa-surfing does seem to be working though. So far, in order of coolness, I’ve been invited to stay on or in: one sofa, two guest rooms, a sailing yacht, and – as I’m write this – a private lakefront retreat. Not bad for my first week on the road.
I fear that my run of luck will not last long. Because my friends, we – you and I – sit at the very edge of a major disaster and are all doomed. I didn’t know this.
During my last few weeks afloat I stopped for a very nice visit in the city of Chesapeake, Virginia. Chesapeake is mostly not remembered as the site of the Battle of Great Bridge early in the American Revolution. It’s an old city and has an annual Heritage Festival. This year’s coincided with my visit. They had typical Heritage Festival offerings like quilters and the wandering barbershop quartet. They had glass blowers, bee keepers, sheep shearers, a dulcimer maker and the Master Gardeners from the local extension service. Off on the fringe in their own little tent was the Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT. Now, I am sure that the CERT members are all concerned citizens whose sole goal is the welfare of their neighbors but, after talking with them at length, I got the impression that they might be more of a drinking group with worry issues. Their primary reference is a book – of which they kindly gave me a copy – titled “It’s A Disaster…and what are YOU gonna do about it?” My copy is the 4th Edition. You can get more information on the web at www.itsadisaster.net. After browsing through this little tome I realized that this was a crowd for whom the glass was always half-full – with poison.
Admittedly, the book does touch on things that actually might happen in the area – it was published by the Chesapeake Health Department – such as fires, hurricanes, and extreme heat. It also goes into detail on things that are less likely to happen such as winter storms and tornadoes. What grabbed my attention was the information provided on 1) Earthquakes – eastern Virginia hasn’t had a destructive earthquake since Europe and North America split some 65 million years ago; 2) Landslides and avalanches – for you who haven’t been there the only place flatter than eastern Virginia is the ocean bordering it; and 3) Volcanic Eruption. Each of those three is less likely to occur in the City of Chesapeake than a meteor strike. No lie.
The disaster that is covered in the most detail is the reigning favorite – Terrorism. There are entries for Cyber attacks, Bio attacks, Chemical attacks, and – wait for it – Weapons of Mass Destruction. You’ll learn the symptoms of Anthrax, Ricin, Tularemia and other nasty things. You’ll be warned to avoid “a white powdery substance in strange places” and “aerosol mists”. Make sure you don’t eat or drink “contaminated food or water”. OK, – and I may not be clear on this point – but if somebody doesn’t eat it how are you going to know it’s contaminated? Most of the things described are “odorless and colorless”. For “radiological events” – e.g. nuclear explosions – we are warned to watch out for things “falling off bookshelves or from the ceiling” and to “be careful since floors and stairs could have been weakened by the blast”. Or vaporized.
This is why I despair about writing fiction.
After some further thought I think these CERT people may be on to something. Forget the book except for one thing. Nowhere in it does it even mention “Run to the CNN camera and start asking where the Government is.” I hope I live long enough to see a tornado sweep through the Republican National Convention and hear all the We-Need-Smaller-Government pundits start whining about how it took FEMA 24 hours to get the hors-d’oeuvres flowing again. At its core this is a book about helping your neighbors and taking care of yourself. When you filter out all the Homeland Security inspired nonsense and downright improbable occurrences you are left with the realization that with just a little forethought you can insure both the safety of you and your family and be left well enough armed to “take care” of those neighbors who can’t take care of their own.
The CERT members are merely continuing a tradition that has been in place since humanity suffered its first disaster. We may be past “Oh shit. There goes the volcano again. Bring me a virgin and the knife.” But when it hits the fan these CERT members are not going to be looking at a soggy, dark screen wondering why they can’t Tweet about the tsunami. They’ll be outside helping their neighbors, clearing trees and unplugging drains and walking around distributing knowledge about what needs to get done next. Things, in Chesapeake, Virginia anyway, will be well on their way to normalcy by the time FEMA shows up with the hot chocolate and blankets.