Short Shots

National Blog Posting Month is approaching, starting Sunday**. The point of NaBloPoMo is to post something every day, and my plan is to write at least a short short story each day in November. I hope also to snag a photo album or two from Mom's so there will be pictures too, as this blog has been too text-heavy recently.

For kicks, here's a photo from the entrance of the Disney store in one of the malls around here.



**This Sunday is also Fall Back, so change your clocks and check your fire alarms and the food in your emergency kits.

It's Raining Again

Vernonia's flooding again.


This is the small town where YaYaWOT and her family were living when I started hanging out with them. I met them about four months after the big flood of 1996, one they were calling a "hundred year flood" because the water was so high.


It rained ten inches in one day, a lot even for western Oregon. The Is lives on a hill and her house is dry, but the National Guard has been evacuating people by Zodiac raft and by helicopter. It seems like it's only been in the last couple of years that Vernonia has recovered from the '96 flood, and when I moved there V-town, a logging community, was feeling the spotted owl effect.


Now it's under water again. Here's to our friends and neighbors in Vernowhere.

Car Kit

I don't know how but Zirpu found an emergency-preparedness company in Utah that sells all kinds of stuff to help you and your family be prepared for an emergency.


Honestly, they sell everything you would need if you wanted to go off into the woods and get ready to survive social-economic collapse, the invasion of Martians, or the takeover of the government by the devil (wait... has that already happened?), short of guns and ammunition. In the case of any of those events Zirpu's already laid in some reference materials (like this and this). They sell #10 cans of freeze-dried everything, water purifiers, stored-food preparation appliances, home-storage cookbooks, and what would otherwise be known as fancy camping gear.


I purchased a 72 hour kit plus a stove and fuel cans. I'll leave the stove combo in the garage with the rest of our emergency gear, but the kit is going in the car. Given how much stuff is in it, I was happy to see the size of the pack. I already keep a change of clothes, a pair of boots, and a sweater and the jumper cables in the trunk, and the trunk isn't that large (due to the electric battery, the seats don't fold down either).



I hope that I am at home in bed with Zirpu when the earthquake happens (I keep my glasses on the bedside table for a reason). It's as likely that I will be at work on an island and he will be at work across the bay. Because it's already known that a lot of people work and study far from home and it is likely that major transportation links will be damaged, it is easy for me to imagine that I may have to walk back to the house if I'm not there. The pack will make it easier for me to make that walk.


The emergency may not be an earthquake. It could be a fire, as our neighbors in SoCal are all too aware, and we could have to jump in our car and bug out. What would we take, if we had time to load up? The computers, the fire safe, a sculpture Phil made that I can't photograph...


Are you ready?

An apology and a recommendation

I think yesterday's post is pretty terrible. It does forward my goal of telling people they should be prepared, but... ugh. I wrote it when I was tired and uninspired and really just wanted to go to bed, still recovering from the trip last week I think. But you deserve better.

Further ugh, I opened up sfgate.com this morning and saw that there was a tornado in Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri that killed 20 people yesterday, including a bunch of students when parts of their high school collapsed.

I will need to plan ahead and think about my best writing time of the day. I suspect it is in the morning or early afternoon (I am writing this just before noon). Having an idea to write about is another challenge: How to build something around a single idea that is long and interesting enough to read. Herb Caen got around this by using his "three dots" in his column, but I am not in his class to do it on a regular basis.

Tea has written a beautiful post about growing up and a person who showed her the way. I encourage you to read it. The part that most resonates with me is toward the end, where she describes Amanda's gingersnaps. If you read, or have already read, about Aunt Syl's enchilada sauce, you'll know why. Because I can replace the words "Amanda's gingersnaps" with "Aunt Syl's enchilada sauce" and "creaming butter" with "chopping peppers," I know she feels about those gingersnaps the way I feel about Phil's enchilada sauce.

As long as we are remembered, we live.

Shake it up, baby, now

How many times have I talked to someone from the Midwest who says, "You're from California? What about those earthquakes? Aren't you scared?"?

I want to say, "Well, aren't YOU scared of tornadoes?"

We just had a 4.2 earthquake centered in Berkeley this evening (2140 PST). It jerked the house and rattled the rickety bookshelf where Zirpu keeps his Rubik's cube collection. Zirpu and I looked at each other, waiting to see if it was going to last long enough to get in the doorway.

I didn't really think about earthquakes that much until Katrina hit Mississippi and Louisiana and those awful pictures came out of New Orleans (maybe because I wasn't here for the 1989 earthquake, the one that postponed the World Series). After that, I thought, "That that could be us: Without the flooding, but with a lot more rubble." It didn't help that at the time I was working in a building that was described as "the tallest building on campus before the earthquake, and the longest afterward."

I became an evangelist for emergency preparedness. Like a lot of evangelists (or the famous ones anyway) I'm not as prepared for the emergency as some people, but I certainly preach the gospel, keeping a readiness list in my PDA to share like Chick Tracts. During Halloween of 2005 I handed out Smart & Finals' Readiness list along with bite-size Milky Ways. This is the list around which my friend who is a Neighborhood Emergency Response Team member and her household built their "earthquake box" (actually they have a shed), so we built ours around it too.

It occurs to me as I write this that I started hanging out in Vernonia, OR, about six months after it was flooded by the Nehalem River in 1996. At that time, the high water marks on the buildings, particularly the high school, were quite obvious. The house of friends floated off its foundation but not away, held in place by pipes. Another friend had a tree fall through her living room. But by the time I met them, only the water marks remained and I didn't really understand what they had been through. Until the flooding caused by Katrina.

The earthquake will happen, someday, and since we don't plan to leave (and live where there are tornadoes? You've got to be kidding!), we have to hedge ourselves against what happens afterwards. The frame of our house is bolted to the foundation and our Quake Box and water are easy to reach. A pair of boots, jeans, and a sweater live in the trunk of the car. I have "ICE" (in case of emergency) next to two out-of-area names in my cell phone and we keep our documents in a fire safe.

My NERT friend pointed out that the best way to help in an emergency is to not need help. I'm doing my best to not need help. I'd much rather be in a position to give it.