My hometowns continue to lead a charmed life.

[sistawendy]

This just in from Evil Sister: she and her elder daughter are fine despite Hurricane Milton, and Gainesville, FL "dodged another bullet". I can't help but wonder how long that's going to last. I'm not even sure what my sister was doing there.

Meanwhile, back in Seattle, I did my database monkeying for Lambert House last night at their newish temporary location: St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, an architecturally interesting church about a mile from the house.

I've been asked several times why the house has moved temporarily. It's having its foundation replaced; leaks had rendered the basement unusable and had imperiled the house. So, somebody's going to jack the place up and pour some brand new concrete.

How's the church, or rather, its carriage house? Swank! It's a lot of space, and it's in excellent repair; I had no idea the Episcopalians did so well for themselves. Our poor little house with its decades-long history of absentee landlords suffers in comparison. The move seems not to have deterred the kids youth from coming, which was the highest priority in the selection of the space. The IT situation wasn't quite ideal yet, but we made it work. Gotta crunch those numbers.

And another excursion: I went to the Blue Moon Tavern, which is an ancient dive bar in the U District with a venerable history of serving literati and pinkos, for of all things a house music night. Picture people, several older than I am, shaking their booties to old house on vinyl in a smallish, sticker-covered bar that predates my mother. That's why I live in a big city. I'll be back for "DJs in a Dive Bar", and preferably not alone.

Comments

[chaos_muppet]

Your sister is beaming a very privileged point-of-view.

Milton was pushed south by a cold front, so we were spared the worst of the storm. We felt tropical storm effects a.k.a. under 74 m.p.h. winds. I think our winds were maybe 30 m.p.h. constant. No biggie for us.

Helene on the other hand, kicked our collective asses. My house had 67 m.p.h. constant winds. The gusts were surely in the hurricane winds level. My less than a week old roof had to be patched. Since I work in the county community services, I staff the shelters and deal with the fallout of storms.

Helene left over 65,000+ homes without power in the city. Our population in the county is around 280,000 people. Our population is heavily in poverty, so people lost their food and emergency WIC funds went out. That was scheduled for yesterday when the storm hit. I spent last week and this week with people losing their shit, because they no longer had food, a home, or power. Lost of power means no food and hot uncomfortable people. When you are in poverty, it's hard to recover or protect your resources.

Also, the state, Duhsantis, enacted a new law banning homeless from the public a few weeks ago. The polic did a clean up and many went to jail for tresspassing on public lands. It made the situation a lot worst.

Debby gave us a good shake down. Helene kicked our asses. Milton was a prolonged thunderstorm and the least of the bunch. I happily live on the NW side of town. My power lines are underground (code starting with 1982 construction) and never lost power. I am lucky and I know it. I've shared my AC with friends.

Gainesville is in the middle of the state. Storms have to travel 80+ miles before they get to us. A category three on the coast turns into a category one for us. Hurricanes fall apart when they hit land. We will always have it better than the area around us, and why I live here instead of the coast. There is no dodging a bullet. It's just safer here.

[sistawendy]

I know my niece was there for Helene, but I doubt that my sister was.