There have been 275 hurricanes that have made US landfall since 1845. Only four have been like Katrina.

Here in Oxford, the 2.72 inches of rain courtesy of the same meteorological phenomena responsible for incomprehensible devastation a few states southward provides no reference frame whereby I can fathom what has/is unfolding.

There hasn't been a natural disaster in US history that measures up to this. Insured losses- which are next to impossible to estimate- nevertheless have been estimated upwards of 25 billion dollars. Typically about 40% of people do not have insurance so expect total losses to be double that of stated insured losses.

And now the cascade effect is beginning. 9 refineries have shut down and 60% of oil rig platforms have been evacuated. Gas jumped this morning .40 to.50 cents per gallon to an average here in the Tri-State of 3.09. It is now going to cost us 50.00 to fill up the Element. However if my fool butt had a Suburban, for instance, I could shell out close to 100.00 to fill up. There is talk that some places and stations could run out of fuel by the end of this Labor Day holiday weekend. Surely gas prices will ease after the holiday.

A coworker of mine took his grandson to school in Batesville this morning and was told by a fuel station manager that the station was not going to get a tanker in after they run out. This quick of an impact on the fuel industry in the US is unprecedented. I joked before Katrina that gas would be 3.00 a gallon by Christmas. I would not be surprised if it could get to 5.00. We shall soon see.

My last post showed the Richelieu Apartment destruction and the tragedy that unfolded there. Indeed, sometimes the incapacity of the human mind to contemplate impending peril is again demonstrated in the picture below. I do not know what happened to the wedding party after this pic was taken the Saturday before the hurricane- hopefully they got out. Despite warnings and evacuations, the wedding went on in downtown New Orleans. Note the boarded windows in the background.

FREEKIN' MUNKEBITES HURRICANE ALERT MODE!!!!!
Can you tell where the hurricane is?

I guess I'd put Munkebites into alert mode since everybody and their brother is.

But this is an historical thing in the making.....Katrina already has become the fourth largest/strongest in the recorded history of Atlantic basin hurricane records. Earlier Sunday, its central pressure dipped to 904 milibars and had sustained winds of 175 mph with gusts of 215 mph. By comparison, Andrew ranks 8th on that list. This is even stronger than Camille in July 1969. If it keeps this current path and strength (some fluctuations are likely), there could be a storm surge in the New Orleans area of about 20-30 feet. That would be devastating.

There is already unprecedented wording coming out of Louisiana local NWS offices. I've never seen them use words such as "devastating" in relation to a storm in my lifetime, while describing the potential for the storm to: "destroy most/all gabled roofs" in the direct damage swath; "cause high rise buildings to sway, with some collapsing possible."

There are even inland tropical storm watches for the southern central Tennessee counties below Nashville. You just don't see that often. The Ohio Valley (central and eastern mainly) could receive 2-5 inches of rain, sustained winds of around 20mph with gusts to 35mph, some sporadic power outages and localized flooding. Expect the Ohio River to rise to perhaps 35 feet in Cincy before this is all said and done. But, that is if the current models are tracking this thing right. They are not all in agreement this far out however.

I think the storm will weaken to a strong Category 4 hurricane before landing just east of New Orleans and the 12:35a.m., August 29th radar returns indicate dry air entraining into the west side of the storm, which will continue the weakening process until landfall. HOWEVER, this is still going to be an historic impact.

Already, there are rumors in Northern Kentucky with the attending runs on gas stations that gas prices are going to shoot to $4.00 per gallon. Although 20% of our useable fuel goes through the Louisiana processing areas, I don't think we'll see that big of a spike. Depending on the total aftermath, expect to see a widespread trickle-down impact across the economic structure of the country. Suffice it to say, I would not want to be building a house in the next few months, if you don't have your lumber ordered yet.

Pray for those who could not get out and pray for the sensibilities of those who, like those who chose to ride out Camille and have a hurricane party in this picture below, might perish because of their foolishness.

Cinebites

Since I like movies and writing about them, here's my site with my reviews of both current releases and DVD's. I've always been a critic of sorts and I've done some reviews over the years on Munkebites and I just wanted to be a lil' more up front with it since some folks have shown at least miniscule interest.

It's kind of hokey I know and very rudimentary, but I am gonna be working with it over time and you can let me know what you think, what I can add to it, and for you tekkie-types, you can tell me HOW to do it. Or you can sit back and laugh. But you can't stop me. The only hope you'll ever have on this planet is that I'll be contained.

Getting Back At It

So, after a summer where I dipped my shoulder and right wrist into mountain bike hades as well as crunch up Veritas' summer intern's car on I-75 in Kentucky, I am ready for some excitement. How about pumping up Oxford's population to the tune of 15-16,000 people in some 3-4 days? Or...how about sitting in a bus when it's all happening? Dang- do I need another vacation already?

Got the community room decked with window treatments as well as a work station, so the major furnishings are in place and that edges up the excitment meter on my part.

Tomorrow, we help new frosh move in and Saturday we give away free hemp necklaces made by Veritasians at A Taste of Oxford. I don't know if they'll make it there.

The necklaces I mean.

And it all comes crashing down.....summer break that is.

So, the annual arrival of the driver's meeting this Thursday signals the new year. I have to say that Oxford is the most seasonal place in which I've ever lived. The academic calendar seems to govern all of our lives. It ain't no complaint.....just an obzervayshun. Got my D.O.T. fizzkull and I'm ready to alight in the saddle again.

Well,Spen and I are back from a week in Naperville, Illinois for a conference and I am pretty sure I don't want to drive the I-80/94 corridor in south Chicago anytime soon. We had a rich and beneficial time and this time with tha SpenDoc sort of culminates our summer internship together at the Dana household. But he and his sis be moving in down the street just one house away so that will be stupendously nice.

Stoodints are returning and another season begins here and I am thinking/reflecting through what we are and should be about as a church. I'm not quite sure what that means other than some more internal transformation on my behalf to be who and what I need to be for the long haul. Some fire....some ice....but needed nonetheless.

Back from Rainsland.....and I am very thankful for their graciousness in giving us access there.

Got to engage with the Beanius and CMarsh for a couple of days and that never fails to invigorate.

The hi-lite had to have been taking the fellers into Bat Cave right off the Natural Bridge trail. Or maybe it was the Fence Lizard atop the Bridge, who- upon finally seeing me sitting beside its tree-side perch and seeing the two-headed, towering behemoth called the Marshbean approach- jumped off the tree, legs whirring mid-jump in high-gear in anticipation of a quick get-away. The little beast had not fully figured into the landing the amount of torque he was generating so that when he landed with a splat, he immediately did a two and one-half somersault in his haste, flashing us his white undercarriage in double succession and disappeared over the edge of the drop, committing what was (for me) the first ever Lizardicide. My heart sank and my jaw dropped as we looked at each other to register if what we saw was indeed what happened.

But alas......the creature did not perish, we concluded, as there was a ledge below on which he would have landed. God bless that base-jumping reptile.

I am exasperated by the seemingly undending tirade of newsstories regarding the disappearance of yet another girl/boy/young woman. If it's not terror, global "warming," or some barrell of Middle-Eastern crude-sludge threatening to bitch slap me at the pump, it's now that if you are female, you just might disappear.

It is not that these things aren't happening. They are. It's not that there aren't horrors being committed. There are. It isn't that there aren't people hurting.

The point is that terrorization of children and women have been happening all along (yeah, even here) and now it's a more worthy news item for the major media news slop troughs. Why now all of a sudden? It isn't that these stories aren't compelling either. But considering the other hundreds and thousands who "disappear" and do not get media coverage, who is it that gets to choose who gets coverage and who doesn't? And why?

Maybe if the alphabet news channels really wanted to help, one of them would dedicate a 24-hour a day news channel solely for ALL the missing. Or could it be that some of the missing serve a greater purpose in their absence for an even more sinister agenda and that is why they get covered?

What does the reality of the Kingdom of God in our midst have to say in this culture of fear taking a bloody root in this land and in the minds of a hoodwinked populace? How does the way we live our lives and the way we experience the community of God speak hope to this? Or are we, in our present yearnings for the new emergent ideations, in danger of retreating to ecclesiastical abodes more removed and voiceless in these times and other like matters?

Why do we relationally extend ourselves to the point of no longer being able to service some of the relationships we started? We are as unfair in such relationships as initiators/cooperators as we are unfulfilled as recipients. We hit it off, lose steam and bow out. Or we are drawn in, want to give more and we’re given the curtain call.

NEED FOR SPEED AND THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD

Yesterday we could have been killed.

Or seriously hurt.

Or hurt…period.

But for some reason and out of all the possible outcomes available to what happened yesterday, the one most beneficial to us physically was played out. I shall try to briefly ‘splain myself in a moment.

Our (mine, Spen and Dave’s) destination on this Saturday, July 16th, was not to stand and stare in amazement at Spen’s battered vehicle in the pouring rain smack-dab in the middle of southbound Interstate 75. Indeed, mile marker 102 just south of Lexington was to uneventfully pass on by just like it had on previous caving trips that I had driven. Yet, factor in three lanes of traffic and heavy rain and a pool of water and 6 seconds of life were suspended as our late-90’s Prelude entered a “fish-tail,” wherein the rear of the vehicle loses traction and sways out of control in an eerie smoothness. We were in the left-most lane when we hit the water and it hydroplaned our rear leftward. As the car came out of the lurch, we were fifty miles per hour and angled forty-five degrees into the crowded flow of traffic (yet mercifully still in our lane). Immediately, the rear wheels caught pavement in a sick screech and violently swung the car to the left. I just went with it, which in turn slammed us further left into the concrete center guard- first the front-end and then instantly the rear left side. I remember thinking “just keep it left….keep it left.”

We skidded and sputtered to a stop and realized we were okay…..at least in these emerging seconds. I began imagining other motorists hydroplaning into our rear end as we were not far away from the water hazard. We still weren’t out of the woods. I started the car again and it limped forward another hundred yards, presumably to where we hoped was “greater” safety. All the while, tractor-trailers, cars and trucks with boats zoomed by undaunted by the conditions and grossly uncritical of their speed.

Unhurt, we began to assess, recollect and plot our next move. Just as we contemplated calling the police for a report, a patrolman arrived within minutes behind us, and then a fire truck. The officer commented that the several calls made about us were “sure” there were injuries. He also said most all of the wrecks like ours that he had seen end up in serious injury and, of course, even worse. We weren’t aware of how bad the car was until he told us our rear left wheel was crooked. Milling around the fairly extensive damage to the left side of this car in a three-inch deep road river helped to make the whole episode real to us I suppose.

Now I want to tell you why the computer game series, Need For Speed perhaps saved our lives.

I will first make the foundational statement that it is God whom I attribute our preservation in this incident. I don’t know if there were suspensions in the natural order of the physical world and that we were miraculously spared. I just don’t know. There weren't any overt supernatural signs pointing to that...no angels taking over the wheel, etc. (though that would've been cool). There are several other more mundane markers of God’s providence, or a “seeing before,” to which I can point. And in the final estimation from my vantage, the compilation of these factors are just as miraculous because our survival might have hinged on Christmas day, 2003.

It was this day that my Uncle Joe gave me Need For Speed, a computer racing game programmed to be the most realistic driving game around. All the parameters of the gaming experience aim at real-time drive-and-response conditions throughout. If you jump your car or crash into a median, you feel it in your steering wheel. Conditions and reaction times are designed to mimic real world situations. I took this game home and was hooked.

I distinctly remember introducing this game to Jason, Spen’s older brother, and teaching him how to maneuver my car from the thousands of inevitable crashes and side-swipes into concrete barriers and medians so that you can control your vehicle. As foolish as this sounds, my response this day on the Interstate was the exact same response that I had taught Jason and indeed had virtually performed countless times. Every time you hit the barriers there are natural responses your car has that closely parallel the physical world. There are maneuvers you can employ to successfully “come out” of the impacts in order to stay straight....a sort of “hit-it-and-go-with-it.” The tendency for drivers to overcompensate on steering during a hydroplane or in barrier crashes is a major reason for injury and other vehicle involvement. Strangely enough, the fish-tailing, the skidding and crashing into the barrier was quite familiar. I suppose I was able to extrapolate the necessary skills from similar virtual crashes to the one we had Saturday. That’s what we joked about standing on I-75 too……”it felt like Need For Speed.”

If I think of all the contingent factors and chance factors at work in the crash and the weeks, months and years leading up to it, the mode of God’s providence starts to emerge in a fantastically creative way.

I was born into the family I had and have the uncle I have for a more apparent reason now. It is not out of the realm of possibility that God in his foresight knew the possibilities of our choosing to travel on this day, with this type of weather, with this type of car, with this type of road at this time of day with this spacing of vehicles at the time of the accident onset. You pair that with the free-will choices of the people to be on the road at the time they were, their driving skills, attentiveness, etc., and you compound the contingent factors that could have made this outcome different should any of these factors be altered.

Our emergence from this accident began one and one-half years ago when Uncle Joe gave me Need For Speed. I don’t think it is totally implausible to say that God’s providential activity bears out in this way- in the seemingly frivolous, mundane matters of our lives. Through our complex, interconnected human relationships and human freewill, he weaves together his providential and protective care like a master craftsman, weaving all the intricate threads into the stories of our lives. Most of the time, we aren't cognizant of these activities because we are always on the lookout for the "immediate miraculous." God is not God simply because he can do the miraculous. He is the Abba Father whose "thereness" on a rainy interstate on a busy Saturday afternoon began December 25th, 2003.

So This Is What's Become of It In It's Cyberabsence...

I know the Most Senior of Fockers and the Lord of All Jays may never blog again and indeed may never see this. Hence, I am resorting to my secret stash of weaponry with which I have long threatened him.....hopefully to raise his ire......anything will do. He should know, if he can get away from the Fock Market for a minute, that this is NOTHING like what I have. And this much from some very close to him. My allies run deeeeep.

Just an update here.....

I am languishing under the impact my 221 lb. frame endured last Thursday whilst mountain biking in Hueston Woods. We were going down a grade when we happened upon an embedded log laying perpendicular to the single-track trail. To me, it looked halfway jumpable, as there was only a drop of about 2 feet followed by another jump much smaller.

Well, tha SpenDoc walked down it and I had intentions of doing the same but I had to teach my younger protege how it was to be done. I went back up the trail so I could speed up my approach. I pedaled down and skidded to a stop just short of the jump.....I should have listened to my gut right then and there.

SpenDoc had already positioned himself so he could "see this." I made my second attempt and determined I was going to do it.

What happened next was all quick and time-suspended altogether. I did not get any "air" so that made my front tire go straight down. That in turn flung me over my handlebars and I landed on my left shoulder and skidded. That was simultaneously the stupidest thing and the most painful thing I've done in a while.

I had to walk the bike off the trail, onto the road and ride back to trail head with one arm. That sucked a bit.

And to top that Black Thursday off, I was attepmting to light my grill later that night and it wasn't happening the first few tries. After turning everything off again and waiting briefly, I hit the light button and became the center of an orange propane fire ball that promptly singed off my right eyelashes, forearm and digital hair. I smelled insane. But I survived. Again.

And, no, I did not go to the Dr. I am giving it a few days to see how I heal. If anything crazy persists/starts, then I shall be off.

(Although I am not a doctor, I play one on the internet).

SELF DIAGNOSIS:
-Deep Contusion/Grade 1 Sprain To Left Clavicle With Attendant Abrasions On Shoulder
-Bruised Sternum
-Bruised/Sprained (Grade 1)5th Right Metacarpal
-Bruised/Sprained (Grade 1) Hamate, Lunate and Triquetral Ligaments

Well, how can I complain NOW....after complaining for five years that I'd like to finally see/experience some severe weather? I'll miss this part of my tree.

There are things to which we are called that are not possible by our own nature or our individualistic aspirations.

While I am currently experiencing blog mania, I'll try this too (though I am wanting to forget)....

HOW TO END YOUR VACATION TIME.....

What do you do when your mother.....who is having to navigate her way through the tangly details of settling her mother's estate......tells you your younger brother has just been arrested for arson- the same drug-addicted brother on a progressively self-destructive path who had dropped out of his "Christian" high school a month before he was to graduate to get married? The same one who has an infant child.....who has been homeless a few times, "disappearing" for weeks with his druggie circles and showing up in homeless shelters all by age 18? And all this in the last year?

This saga with my younger brother has been going on now for the better part of a year and it doesn't get any more bizarre (well, I guess it could on second thought). It is quite eerie to be awakened to the panicked voice of another mother of a wayward child in your own mother's house early on the morning after my Granny had passed. My mother didn't need to have this upon her. I knew that this unfortunate chance encounter between these two women had my brother to blame. This crumpled stranger imploring about the whereabouts of her daughter to my mother could not bring her daughter back- wherever she was.

This is only one cog in this still-rolling, still slipping gear that is my brother's young and downwardly-mobile life. The stories are numerous, but this episode congealed it's crazy reality in the most macabre juxtaposition to an equally paramount transition in our family. And it really doesn't take much to vibrate the indented strands of pain already embedded in our family. It didn't have to get to this, thank you.

Being this far removed had its obvious advantages of course. But you are never really unaffected....one can just live under any such delusion if they choose. But I really want to know how I enter into this.

My brother didn't start just any old fire on any old place, it was the trailer his teenage ex-wife and infant daughter lived in (incidentally, I don't believe they were in the structure). I- we- really want to know how to simultaneously love a person and despise an action so tied to a person. I can get over not being able to see my mother because she had to visit with estate lawyers and communicate with her son's jailers. I'm not sure I can rightly categorize the memory of having to tell my mother to leave his ass in jail and not bail him so he can begin to decide if this is the life he wants. My mother is "there" and ready to do this, but I know I'll never understand the connection between a mother and child nor ever fully appreciate the stamina it must take to submit one's flesh and blood to the dire consequences.

Maybe the next time I see my brother will be in prison. Maybe that is the way it should be.

For now.

OF MIRTH, LEVITY AND HUMOR.....

Do you ever wonder if you push the limits in your relationships?

Ever try to step outside yourself to try to see if you are really the buffoon you suspect you can be at times?

Can the "class clown" syndrome of one's youth ever appropriately carry on into adulthood?

Do you ever fear if you are exhausting to people sometimes because you enjoy them so much?

Are funny people liked and are desired to be around mainly because they are funny and make others laugh?

Ever wonder what it is that people really see in you?

Is acerbic wit detrimental to a kingdom mentality?

Is comedic prowess simply the obverse persona of a true melancholic?

Here in Tennessee......on the last leg of our vacation to the North Carolina mountains. The camping was excessively wet (it rained 2-3 times a day- no kidding), but enjoyable with my father/stepmother joining us. Stayed in a bed/breakfast the last day there in Franklin,NC and found some cool eateries and local dives. And the annual drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway was windy, foggy and rainy and you couldn't see nuthin' (presuming said nuthin' was there to be seen).

Kinda ready to be back home tho. We still have to see some pipples still yet.

BTW, my blog seems to be loading kind of funky-like with my pic at the bottom of the page and no links (could be my momma-in-law's puter). Any one else getting the same?

Just buried my Granny this weekend and learned a lot about my family. There was the requisite weirdness, ongoing estrangements, reunitings.....but I had some quality time with my mother and other family members despite the circumstances. Now that Granny is gone, I may have seen the last of their house. So much of what I know of my family and my identity is wrapped in that physical space on Valley View Drive in north Knoxville. So on we go.

Yeah....cyberspheric absenteeism abounds here. And even in some of my peeps that I run with. An excellent ensample am I (how 'bout some Middle English for ya?).

Busy. Aren’t we all just that? Aren’t we agendized to the max? I mean, I’m having a love jones for a smartphone right now because I think it’s gonna make my life more manageable. I justify it because my phone is toying with me and my Sony Clie SJ-30 died a miserable and taunting death weeks ago. That’s what I get for being a suckling tethered to the tremendous technological teat central to our society.

Busyness is the devil’s home-boy. Pastor-types are the best to hitch up with hurry for succor because of our unhealed need-to-be-needed syndrome. Arguably, the ONLY real difference in this way between being a pastor in the establishment church and being one in the simple/organic realm is the number of people potentially available to impose upon our relational resources and thereby feed our ego needs and depleted affirmation reserves. Validation is the fake payoff for busyness.

Relational sacrifices have, can and will be made. We choose and we un-choose. It is all risk, pure and simple. What often goes unspoken are the expectations of those in these relationships. Some inevitably assign more worth to the relationship than others and it is entirely possible that some can find what they need elsewhere. But who determines that? Who gets to define the relationship? True, there are seasons where relational spheres overlay. But if God be the mover and we move on, so be it. But if by negation we neglect what we had, was what we had mere novelty among the others we pursue?

I think I will tend to be draining and somewhat selfish with this perspective. I understand that. I am a relational mutt. I am a commitment junkie…..in part because of familial history. I am a communication freak. I know most often how, when and where it’s needed but I do often suck at it where it really counts. I am realizing that I need a constant relational frame of reference to battle a persistent nostalgic/melancholic tendency that permeates my relational foundations and current efforts. I need to know that the tribes I choose are the ordinations of God…..and I know that’s not fair. I emerged from one that at times seemed to be ordained by despair. To know that I can choose and abide with a people is a revolutionary paradigm for me.

I will push the edges in my need for mileposts on my relational journeys. They are not there for retreat-----ever. They are to show me where I’ve been. But sometimes people are slow or they just don’t clarify that the milepost is their own exit sign. That always aches too familiar.

So enuff with the needy-bleedy stuff.

Got a new WalMart Stuporcenter in O-town. You walk in- it doesn’t even FEEL like you’re in Oxford anymore. Tell me that a place like that which can impose upon your spatial sense of reality isn’t spiritual. From miles around, we will pay monetary homage weekly to this retail demigod. I was there today momentarily and was awash with the giddiness to get, to buy…to consume. So I bought my stuff and ran shrieking, “get thee behind me Walton!!”

My weekend started prematurely with an urgent call from my mother. My Granny, who is battling in the final throes of pulmonary fibrosis, was on the verge between this world and the next.

So, off we went, to spend the next few days by her bedside. We have been preparing for this time, but you are never "ready." I wasn't ready for her to clear the rest of the family from the hospital room in order to speak to me alone. As she urges me close, I hang over this strong-willed yet loving matriarch and she proceeds to give me her last wishes regarding the funeral and things thereafter. It was just too surreal when your most available memories of your Granny are of how she's the coolest Granny in the whole world because she runs the toy department at K-Mart. She always had the best gifts at Christmas. She had the kind of love that as a grandchild, you found it impossible not to immerse yourself totally in it. That is what I think of as I'm draped over her crumpled, oxygen-starved body trying to discern her words.

We thought that Thursday was going to be the Day. But my Granny told me the next day that she asked God to take her while she was choking for breath. She heard him say "no....not yet."

There is a "grace unto dying." I think I am seeing it bear out here some, but I have seen it in the past. It seems to me that God bends "nearer" during this transitioning, bestowing a measure of his presence to his dying child and those who love them. It sustains, enables, energizes and incarnates even if it doesn't miraculously heal. My Granny will not get better. Granny knows that. Even God knows that. This is not faithless defeatism. This grace is allowing my Granny to fashion her farewells in ways that others do not have. There are still rifts in our family that need mending and if we watch how my Granny is learning to die in this grace, I think there is the availability of healing for those who persist here on earth. We're talking about a deep history of relational fragmentation here too, but it can happen if we want it.