Category Archives: General

Fifty-four

Ed and the storm

Ed (in green) talks about the tornado.

Today is Ed Hanna‘s birthday. He’s 54 years old.

It’s kind of a big deal.

My wife, Amy, and I met Ed on May 29, 2011. We were going from place to place after the Joplin tornado looking for places to help out, and found a few people at Ed’s place cleaning up.

Ed lived just a few block down from my friend, Jeff Page, whose house was decimated in the tornado. We ended up on Pennsylvania Street because I wanted to go back to the scene of Jeff’s house. I was having a hard time letting go of a place I had so many great memories at when I lived in the area, and wanted to see if there was someone who could use our services.

There were two houses with a good amount of activity on the street that day, Ed’s, and another one a couple of doors down on the other side.

“Which one should we go to,” I asked?

My wife looked at Ed’s house, then across the street. Ed’s house was covered in this grey matter and looked like insulation had been ripped apart, hydrated, then blown across the surface of the house. The other house wasn’t exactly standing, but there were people working in hardhats, colorful vests, and seemed to be highly organized.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe we should go to that one,” picking the well-orchrestated team across the way.

I didn’t blame her. We had been working all day. We were beat. We could have used a light duty.

“I guess we know where we need to go then,” I said.

And we made our way to Ed’s house instead. To paraphrase Seth Godin, whatever you’re afraid of doing, do that.

It was the correct choice.

view

The view from Ed's porch directly east. The house across the street was demolished by the Joplin tornado.

It was dark inside the house. Black plastic trash bags covered some of the windows, clear tarps on others. We made our way up a spiraling staircase and found three people upstairs working in a room covered with insulation. There was a gaping hole in the roof, covered by a vinyl banner, like the one you’d see hanging announcing a sale or the latest special at a deli. Water sat suspended in the tarp hanging through the roof, floating over the workers, threatening to undue the recovery that had been made so far.

And then I met Ed. He was working with a white air-filtering mask on, digging through a box of his things. His work was focused. The people working in that room were doing all they could to salvage, then move, items to the street where it could be taken to a safer location later.

We got to work carrying things downstairs over and over again to the shelter of outside. I remembered carrying down a box of records and seeing Springsteen and Paul McCartney. The covers didn’t fair the storm well, but one wouldn’t know for sure how they played until they were under a needle.

Eventually, we took a break and Ed told me his story. He has two dogs; both were sucked out of his kitchens windows during the tornado. He took shelter, but was sure he had lost his beloved canines.

The dogs survived.

His year-1907 home, with its hardened wood and stone structure, held up, saving his life. Looks like the story of the three little pigs and the house made of stone holds a bit of wisdom, too.

Apparently, Ed’s a mean pastry chef. I later learned we share a connection: he trained under a chef at the Old Miner’s Inn in Alba, Mo, for seven years. I too spent a lot of time near the Old Miner’s Inn while I was in college: my band practiced in the front of an old woodshop right next door three times a week for several years.

In July, Mennonites came and re-roofed his house and the arduous duty of rebuilding his home continues.

At least it’s without the threat of a water-filled tarp.

dirty work

Ed and I stop for a quick picture after a hard day of cleaning. Ed (in green) is determined to rebuild his home damaged in the storm.

Hope

There was this girl that would show up at our house all the time when I was a young kid growing up in Baxter Springs, Kansas. Her name was Crystal Whitely.

She was always welcome in our home. A friend of my sister Heather, and three years younger, the two were always tooling around. They were in the same class and Crystal lived right across the alley from us. Both her parents and mine still live in the same space all these years later.

That’s the way it is down there. People raise their families, work their jobs, live their lives, and grow together in small communities.

My remembrance of Crystal is that she was a fairly quiet person. But man, do I remember she and my sister hanging out quite a bit through the years.

As they do, times changed. Crystal got married and separated, and was raising her three children in Joplin, Mo., when the May 22, 2011 Joplin tornado hit.

On that evening, she was at home with her 3 children, Shante (10), Trentan (6) and Keana (4). She had no basement to take shelter in, so they huddled together. The tornado ripped Shante and Trentan from her arms.

Shante died during the tornado and Trentan sustained a traumatic brain injury and died the next day. Crystal was severly injured and has had several surgeries to remove debris from her wounded body.

In addition to losing her two children, she and Keana lost everything including the clothes off of their backs.

Baxter Springs Helping Crystal Whitely – Joplin Tornado facebook fan page

The winds, tore.

The days and weeks that followed were filled with surgeries. Fractured ribs. Collapsed lung. Six days in the hospital. More surgeries, one that took out a piece of wood the size of your pinky. Then more surgeries.

And then, the darkness.

By July, things appeared to be hitting Crystal hard, as noted by her facebook posts:

Whomever came up with the phrase “time heals everything” never lost a child!

I miss the way your face lights up when u see me, the sparkle in your eyes when I smile at you, the warmth of your touch. I miss my babies 🙁

I would luv to have a day that i dont have a dr.’s appt or anything that has to do w the tornado … my depression gtn worse n my stress goin up…bout to my breaking point :{

Benefits from friends starting coming together, and her story was told in the local newspaper, The Joplin Globe: Mother of storm victims getting by ‘day by day’

Time wore on. Aug. 22 would have been the first day of school. Shante would have started fifth grade; Trentan in first. That was also the three-month anniversary of the tornado.

When you lose the ones you love, numbers are seared into your soul.

And, in an event like this, it brings a clarity most of us don’t have the ability to understand:

Be happy with what you have and be thankful not to take people for granted. Do you want people to disappear in your life and the last thing they remember is you being childish?

Crystal gets it. Do you?

Do I?

This is a terrible story. There are many, many more from Joplin like it.

So why did I title this post, “Hope?”

Her friends have given a tremendous outpouring of love and affection to Crystal and her daughter. They set up fund-raisers, organized fun things to do to help her cope (she loves football and came to K.C. to see a game recently) and let her know, consistently and faithfully, she is loved.

And on Oct. 19, Crystal found out she was the recipient of a new house from the ABC show Extreme Makeover Home Edition. After returning home from a trip to Disney World, she saw her new home yesterday.

Hope is powerful. Use it.

“The best way out is always through.”Robert Frost

 

4,000 miles

Yesterday, I hit 4,000 miles on my motorcycle.

Hitting that mileage was a big deal for me. The number isn’t arbitrary, but rather signifies a rider’s transition from beginner to intermediate. And it was part of my Five Things to Achieve in 2011 post last year.

Culminated with what I learned as outlined in my Shipping post, it appears an outline to achieving goals is pretty simple:

  1. Envision a goal.
  2. Work through a process to achieve that goal.
  3. Achieve the goal.
The trick is, that second step is the hard one. Riding 4,000 on a motorcycle in Kansas? You’re going to deal with seasons that change like a teenager’s moods. There was a lot of  butt-in-seat time to make that happen. And it was totally worth it.
But there’s three months left to go of this year, and I still have about 50 percent of my list left to go.
Here’s to process!

Tipping

We spent all day Saturday visiting Worlds of Fun, and has reserved a room across the street at a Holiday Inn to spend the night in a little weekend staycation of sorts.

I was looking forward to the stay. I had three bad customer service issues in Lawrence last week and was ready to spend money somewhere where I’d be given service in proper fashion. Right off the bat, I was impressed with the Holiday Inn. It was a big place with lots of room, ample parking and a suite with a king size bed, a foldaway bed for the 4-year-old kiddo, and they even brought up a crib for the 2-year-old.

As a silly sidenote, I’m totally in love with Holiday Inn’s logo. There’s something about that green gradient that I really like.

Things were looking up. Then we went to breakfast.

It was fine, but when I went to pay, there was someone else in front of me at the register, so I waited patiently to settle the tab. Then a couple of people showed up on the opposite side of the register. When the guy in front of me was finished, the woman working the register turned to the lady that showed up long after I had been in line and started working on her bill.

“Humrph,” I thought to myself.

After she was done, the woman turned to me, then to the guy behind the lady that just finished up and said “Who’s next?” The guy deferred to me, and I went ahead. Of course, I should have been well before him and the lady in front of him since I had been waiting the longest, but whatever.

But after I was done, I heard the woman at the register say to the other fellow, “I’m sorry for your wait.”

“Sorry for your wait? What? Didn’t you see me this whole time?” Of course, I didn’t say that. I just kept in inside and went on my way.

I left without tipping. It was a buffet, I reasoned, and it’s not like they really did anything. Besides, they barely even noticed me.

I didn’t think anything more of it. I went upstairs, finished packing and brushed my teeth. With my Sonicare on full blast, I walked around the room. The youngest of my spawn, Remi, was looking out the window. We were on the third floor, and the window overlooked the interior, specifically, the dining area we had just returned from.

As we stood there looking out the window, I noticed the dining area workers doing their thing. They were cleaning up the mess left behind from all us who had eaten at the buffet. Everything looked great. All the tables were set up perfectly, like no one had even been there, ready for the next meal. I had noticed that the night before – the tables were arranged perfectly for breakfast, with order, ready to make an impression on us hungry diners.

Then I noticed the shoes. All of the women who worked in that dining area had sneakers on.

I worked at Toys R Us for five years during college; I know what that means – those people were on their feet, on the move, all the time. They needed something comfortable because the job was demanding on their feet.

You jerk. You big, fat, American jerk,” I thought to myself.

I rinsed out my mouth, explained that I need to do something to Amy, and headed downstairs. I found one of the women, vacuuming around (of course) the table we had sat at and handed her my standard 20-percent tip.

“I forgot to give this before,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem, hon,” she said with a smile. “I’ll share it with the girls, thanks.”

“Great,” I said. “OK.”

And that was that. What a heel. Everyone has their reasons for rationalizing however amount that is given for tipping (see also: Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs). But for me, I had to stop and think: these workers brought out food for us to pick aplenty from, cleaned up our mess (and with two children, there’s always a mess) and then made it look perfect  for the next meal. Am I really going to leave them nothing extra?

I can’t believe I can be so obtuse sometimes.

Sunken

We took the bike to Clinton Lake on Saturday to join a friend celebrating 30 years on this fine planet.

My wife and I stayed a couple hours and when I went to get on the motorcycle to leave, I found the kickstand was sunken into the asphalt.

Man, that hot.

20110718-020859.jpg

Ideal working environment

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what an ideal working environment would be if I could design it.

Some of the components of this environment include:

  • A Mac would be my primary machine, with Coda my text editor of choice
  • I’d have a desk that converted to a standing desk when desired
  • Telecommuting would be available as an option – or at least the freedom to work somewhere else for a bit to change the scenery – such as a coffee shop or library
  • A team of at least one other peer who does similar work to me – we could work together and still be able to “talk shop” when needed
  • I am very much a night owl, so being able to work a later shift would be nice
  • Plenty but reasonable amount of money and time for training, conferences
  • Freedom to work on “playtime” projects
  • Very few in-person interruptions

There’s probably a few more, but I’d need to suss it out a bit. Not to say I don’t appreciate my job, not at all. And you’ve probably already guessed by now, but I have very few of these components available to me now.

Perhaps I need to figure out how to make these happen.

Need

My wife and I got the opportunity to spend some more time today working through the ruins in Joplin, Missouri.

There’s more for me to write: I had anticipated on writing about the three stories we encountered today, but those will have to wait a little bit longer. We’ve been out two (not full, but still) days now. We’re both sunburned, even with sunblock. Our muscles are a bit sore and today we battled wind and dust in the eyes all afternoon long.

We are exhausted.

I am not complaining. In fact, I have really enjoyed the work. I merely mention these details to give a glimpse of what it’s like volunteering. I want you to be prepared, because I want you to come help. Before you come, or in case you can’t, here are a few things the volunteers of Joplin can really benefit from. I’m unsure if there are organizations taking care of these items specifically, but I am sure anyone helping Joplin can benefit from them.

Boots on the ground. There’s loads of work to do and it can only get done with people doing the hard, nasty work. By “boots on the ground,” I mean this quite literally. If you’re going to be helping out in the rubble, you’ll need a good pair of work boots. Nails are everywhere and it only takes a misstep to turn you from a volunteer to a first aid recipient. Workers drive around given tetanus shots just in case. I got mine today since it had been too long since my last one.

I’ve been told of reports of people being turned away when they’ve showed up to help. This has not been my experience. Amy and I went to three different locations today, walked up to someone and said “How can we help?” We were instantly off to work.

Related: United Way Joplin Storm Recovery Project List

Gloves, rubber bins, shovels, brooms and sunblock. We showed up ready to work the first day and quickly realized we didn’t have everything we needed. Like boots, I highly recommend leather gloves that fit well and sunblock to help prevent sunburn. But rubber bins, shovels and brooms? These are necessary items to help people recover their belongings and get them out of their former homes before they’re bulldozed and cleared off. Rubber bins are in short supply. A relative who works at Walmart told me “Those rubber bins are flying off the shelves as soon as we get them in.”

Please donate these items.

Money. Your monetary donations to the Red Cross, United Way and tons of other organizations are really needed. But also, supporting remaining businesses in Joplin will go a long way, too. There are some businesses that have been removed from the face of the earth. Others, like Walmart and Home Depot, have vowed to rebuild, but their workers will have to find something else to do in the meantime. I’m not sure how all that works. It will be interesting to see how it pans out for those employees.

Counseling. We attended a church service this morning and my heart broke with the sounds and sights of those weeping over the loss of loved ones. There will be extensive psychological needs that need to be met. Counseling, therapy, hugs from friends and family, the kindness of strangers: these are expensive things. They require time, effort, and “listening ears.” I hope these needs aren’t neglected.

I wish I could write so much more, but my eyes are heavy. We leave here tomorrow and I’m not sure when we can return to help, but I hope there are others who keep the ball rolling.

Until then, I’ve got a few more stories to tell. Stay tuned.