September 18, 2005

Survivor's Guilt, Continued

I managed to miss much of the news coverage for the past two weeks as my home in Piney Point has both the cable and DirecTV shut off.  Sweet silence.

Given some victims of Charlie, the hurricane that hit south of Tampa last year, are still living in temporary housing, it will be a long, long road for many.

The media is now doing human interest stories and pet recovery stories, so it is not long until the tragedy will fade from the scene.  Government ineptness will make for good copy for a time as FEMA is sending ice trucks to Idaho and ordering/canceling/ordering every such thing.  Lesson learned (hopefully) is that cronyism should be limited to government agencies that don't do anything except waste the tax payers money. The systemic problems, of course, will be swept under some dirty rug in Washington.

I drove back to Piney Point just as the oil companies saw opportunity to rape the consumer in the name of supply-and-demand again.  It made for a great trip on I-95 over the Labor Day weekend with traffic lighter than I've ever experienced.

Being home was glorious - late summer weather perfect on the Potomac. I had wanted to stay for Autumn but we don't always get what we want -- that pesky little hurricane off the Atlanta Coast dictating my window of opportunity to return.

Some minor changes were noted in the neighborhood.  That big pine tree in my back yard that snapped off at the top during hurricane Isabel now is home to a large Osprey family.  Also my old neighbor the Oakwood Seafood Lodge is no more.  It too was forever changed by Isabel and could not survive. In its place - 6 each $750K condo's.  Although I'll really miss having the historic lodge as a neighbor, the new condo's won't hurt my property values a bit.

What once was:

 So is to be:

So too will the devastation of the Gulf Coast be transformed over time. And the horror of the event will all be forgotten, except by those that lived through it.

I did manage a few hours to explore my old home of Savannah on the return trip. Change there is slow, but I noted some since I left in 2001. More on that later.

Current Blog     Last Month    Archives    C-B-D    Email Carbonboy    Top of Page

© 2005 Composites-By-Design Corporation -