Hurricanes, floods and a day of rememberance

I've been meaning to post for several days now, but "things" keep happening around here, which either change the focus of my blog or keeps me so busy that I have no time to blog.

Ten days after Hurricane Irene swept through here, the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee did a number on the Binghamton area.  We weren't directly affected aside from losing power (again), having the basement flood (again), and having a "weather related" day off from school,  but the county was declared to be in a state of emergency, and thousands of folks along the Susquehanna River have lost their homes, their farms, their livelihood.  The neighborhood where I lived when I went to grad school was completely underwater, and I'm sure the house I lived in did not escape damage.  Some of the aerial shots bring back vivid memories of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those who are suffering from this event.  If you would like to help, you can go to the South Central New York Red Cross chapter website here and the Northeastern New York chapter website here  (Irene recovery).  As United Methodists, we also give through the United Methodist Committee on Relief.  One hundred percent of your donations go to help people in need as the administrative costs are covered by the local churches through annual collections. You can direct where you would like your donations to go with various advance numbers. 

So in church today, we were faced with the local tragedy of the flooding as well as remembering the national tragedy of 10 years ago.  All of us over the age of 15 have both personal and collective memories of that experience.  I remember walking through the computer lab at the school where I was teaching  and one of my colleagues saying "a plane hit the World Trade Center".  Thinking it was a little 2 person Cessna or similar I didn't dwell on it.  However, as the events unfolded, I remember leaving the school, going back to my apartment, and trying to get a hold of my brother who lived within walking distance of the Pentagon.  I remember learning about a family neighbor who was killed.  And I remember thinking as the day turned into a week and the week turned into a month, "what the hell am I doing teaching kids how to use microscopes when all of this is going on? How can we focus on objective lenses when thousands of people have lost their lives, when our country has declared war on "terrorism", when there is this cloud of helplessness and hopelessness hanging over the entire nation?"  I felt that my role as an educator was so insignificant to what was happening and I did not see any intrinsic value to what I was doing in the classroom.

This afternoon, in between trying to sew together another recycled feed bag, fill water buckets for the animals, and collect windfall apples for drying, my darling husband, Bud and I decided to trek down to a Celtic Mass of Peace in memory of the events of 9/11.  There is little we can do or offer to those who have lost loved ones either in the attacks or in serving our country subsequently, but listening to the orchestra and choir while sitting next to my family quieted my heart and my mind, at least for the moment.