Zen and the meaning of Facebook

I spend a lot of time on Facebook. Maybe more than I should. Maybe not.

Thing is, I don't consider it a waste of time at all. Relationships are very important to me, and living down here in Houston as I do, I am a long way from the people I care about, in Wichita Falls and in Midland, and in other places.

If and when I visit my friends in those far away lands, the thing I most like to do is to sit and listen to them talk. I don't care if they tell jokes, gossip about the theatre, complain about the theatre, rant about politics - it doesn't matter, because I just love to hear them talk. If they occasionally let me join in for a quick word or comment, so much the better. But that can't happen very often - I can only go visit just so many times in a year.

Facebook gives me a virtual social life. Yes, I'd much rather be there in person with my people, sharing guacamole, hugging them, actually hearing them, smelling their after shave or cologne. But at least online, I can see the posts they offer, one after another, and I can go away and do chores and errands and then come back and see what was said while I was gone.

As for the games... well, if I play one, and you play the same one, and we send each other a cow or a chicken or a mango tree... and if I send you a Mafia Wars getaway car and you send me a .22 pistol (which I don't really need), then the same purpose is served as if we had exchanged actual phsyical gifts - is it not? If you give me a smores maker, does it matter if I need it, does it matter what it cost, does it matter if I ever use it or not, does it matter if I already had six of them in the closet? No, the thought is literally what counts. You thought of me enough to give it to me, and the message was "I see you, I like you and I'm glad you exist," whether there was a card saying it or not. It is the same with a game on Facebook: we play it together, just as we might at a small party, just as we might if you came over to visit with a Scrabble board. Would I rather be in person with you? Of course I would! But virtual, while not to be confused with reality, is truly the next best thing to reality.

If you do or don't play the games, at least I can see what you say, and comment on it, and there is a sort of fellowship to experience. I can see the pictures you upload, and enjoy them, and remember how you look in person, and see Jena's twins holding hands in their car seats, and see Hilary snuggling with her SO, and read about Midland Lisa's mysterious Body Pump activities in Midland, and WF Lisa's family in Wichita Falls, and my favorite cousin in Kentucky when she finds the time to post. I can hear from Maria in Albuquerque, and know that she is OK this week, and I can find out I fought as Beau's or Greg's capo (whatever that is) and snagged $34 from some rival gangster. I can accept a coconut tree or a goat from Allison, whose father I used to sing for when he was a choir director at church and at MSU. I can learn when Jenn's poor bruised body is sore from Lisa's Body Pump torture session. I can learn that I don't know about some of them as much as I thought I did.

And I can let them know when my cat dies, and when I am about to go clean Carlsbad Cavern again, or when I am going to show up at Mummers on the way back through to Houston. Or I can just let them know when I am feeling a little down, and they give me a virtual attaboy to make me feel better.

Yes, the games are inane and silly. Yes, none of you are really, truly here in my little office. Yes, I wish I could be there in your presence, in reality, more often. Yes, I know that my flat panel monitor is no substitute for the sound of your voice. But limping is better than a wheelchair, fuzzy vision is better than blindness, and a virtual hug is better than no hug at all. It may be all electrons and ones and zeros moving across data lines, but it's still love because you're a real person whom I know, somewhere up in WF or over in Midland.

Facebook is right up there with cell phones. It can be annoying in the wrong context, but I sure am glad it's there when I need you to be there.

Now... who needs some zinnias?

Ike, take a hike!

So here's the tale, for those who are interested.

After the power went off Friday, and I phoned in an update to Dave so he could post it as a comment to the blog, the house started warming up, as it tends to do in Houston when you don't have AC. So we went outside, and there were several neighbors standing outside on our driveway. They were there because our house happened to be a sort of midway point between their houses.

So next thing we all knew, we had brought chairs to our driveway and started bringing cold ones of various kinds and sat around talking about hurricanes and other exciting stuff. Might as well, nobody had power, and it was getting really warm indoors.



photo by Wm

We sat around getting to know each other, which was a new thing, because until then, most of us were only on a "how's it going" basis. People kept bring out more cold beverages, knowing full well that we weren't about to keep them cold for long. I think we stayed out until about 10:30, when it began lightly raining again. The wind wasn't too bad - unless you got out of your chair, in which case it tried to blow away.

We knew that Ike wasn't going to arrive until one or so in the morning, so we "hunkered down" as our local officials had advised our area to do. (They discouraged us from evacuating because the roads were full of people who needed to get out by that time).

It was hard to get to sleep because it was so hot. We got some breeze from the south-facing window, and it was good, but it was still stifling. It started blowing hard at 2:00 am, sustained winds of 65 mph, with gusts to 90. But the hurricane force winds got here about 3:30 or 4:00, and lasted until about 6:00. We weren't in the eye. At the worst of the storm, our wind was directly from the north, and it was shooting rain into our doorknob's lock slot and water was streaming out the doorknob on the inside. There was a constant howling sound under the rising and falling noise of the rain hitting the walls. We left windows on the downwind side open so we could get some more cool air, but it was still hot. If you ever wondered, a hurricane doesn't cool you down like a normal thunderstorm.

Next morning, after the winds left, I went outside in the gently falling rain to see what damage we had. Our fence was still standing, but the length to the east of the gate had been moved about ten inches or so out of the yard. The posts, instead of breaking off, had simply plowed a trough into the ground and moved out of the yard! Our neighborhood got off easy, thanks be to God. Virtually all the trees were young, and so they leaned at a 45º angle to the ground instead of breaking off and flying away. Several of our new friends and I went to each tree, pushed them back to more or less upright, and pressed the soil down with our feet. No one of us could have done that, but with all our combined strength, we got all of them up except the second biggest tree in my yard. It will continue to lean, possibly as a cool reminder of the hurricane.

Some people had gone for a local tour outside of our immediate neighborhood, and said that we should go see the older areas of the Plantation. We left Poet's Corner and we could immediately see that the fence hiding the railroad tracks was down in several long stretches. There were some large, older trees by the bayou that were down, and when we got to the railroad overpass west of our house, we saw about forty people standing around with cell phones on their ears. Seems that you could go up there and try to call - some could get actual voice calls, but most of us could only text. I dubbed it "cell phone village." We went further, and toured the older areas, and there were downed trees everywhere. Most had been pulled off the road, so traffic could move. Where trees had landed on the brick fence, it was collapsed. Here are some photos of the plants around our house, and then some of the Sienna Plantation area.


This is the crepe myrtle outside our house. It was on the west wall of the house, where the wind struck us for the last half of the storm. If you look close, there are still a few leaves attached here and there.



Here's the rose bush in the back yard. There are still some blooms, but I have no idea how they managed to hang on.



Here's the little shelter they built to commemorate the old Sugar Cane plantation that our houses now occupy. The structure did very well - the downed tree is resting partly on the roof, but doesn't seem to have hurt the shelter at all.


Here's a sign leaning way down at the school. This is the way most of the trees were leaning. Some of the signs were simply sheared off at ground level. I guess it has to do with how strong the poles are.


So there we are, with all our new friends, and one couple (Bob and Priscilla) has a generator and a grill set up. So the rest of us start digging food out of our freezers, and we brought over shrimp, and chicken breasts, and briskets and fish. Bob set about barbecuing happily, and we all set up chairs on their driveway, and we feasted on food that would otherwise have ruined. More adult beverages appeared, and we made hurricanes, which is a drink involving rum and something purple in color. A great time was had by all, and we speculated on when power might be restored. We saw brilliant flashes of light in the distance, which were not lightning, but merely transformers exploding as they tried to get power restored.

We had a little transistor FM receiver as advised by the local officials who tell you how to prepare for a hurricane, but it decided to start messing up on us. Specifically, the power button stopped working. If it was on, you couldn't shut it down. So I pulled the batteries, but then it wouldn't come back on because the power button didn't work that direction either, so GA beat it up, and it came on. Anyway, we heard news that the city of Port Arthur had banned liquor sales after the hurricane. How barbaric! After a hurricane is exactly when you need booze!

Word got in that a cold front was on the way. The prediction from the weather people was that it would arrive Monday, and that Sunday would be a hot day. I began praying that it would arrive early. And it did. Sunday was nice. We slept nicely, very nicely that night, as a cool breeze blew through our bedroom.

Monday morning, we had some cell reception in the house. Not enough for phone calls, but we could text. Soon, we could actually make calls - but we didn't make too many, because we had to conserve the phone batteries.

I spent most of Monday pruning the remains of my rosebush, clearing leaves out of our landscaping, putting appropriate foods into the compost bin, and so forth. It was a lovely day today. And then GA shouted "Woo Woo!" The power had flickered on for just a second. That meant that the electricity guys were working in our area. Sure enough, by 3:30 the power came on and stayed on. For us, the worst of it was over. There are still a half million or so families without power, and some more without drinkable water, and many many still without ice, which is more of a hardship than you might think.

It will be a week or more until we can buy any meats at the stores, maybe not that long until the lines at the gas station go down to a reasonable level. It still seems a little strange to be able to just flip a switch and a light comes on. It's kind of magic.

Lessons learned:

1) Trust God in the storm, as well as after.
2) A disaster is only as fun as you make it. Make it fun if you can.
3) It really feels good to have friends and family care about you.
4) Those things they tell you to do to be prepared for hurricanes? Do them.
5) Texans come together in hard times.
6) Caving lamps work very well after a hurricane.
7) Never move to Port Arthur.

ps. You may have seen something on the Drudge report about a woman in Galveston complaining that there ain't no FEMA coming there and they don't care about nobody. That woman is way out of line. They tried to get everybody to evacuate Galveston island up until the water was too deep to get them out. That woman is also not typical of Texan attitude. Most of us either evacuated, or we've been darn patient while people work hard to get things back to normal.

I figger she's not a Texan. She's probably from Louisiana.