I know.
I know.
All of you wanted a Hurricane Sally post, I know. I didn’t get any specific messages or requests from any of you but I knew that you were all thinking: “Talk about Sally, you lazy Pensacolian!!!! $^#@$!”
The day has arrived.
Hurricane Sally
It’s been 2 weeks since Sally wrecked our beautiful, seaside city. It’s been 2 weeks since she blew into town, turned on the meteorological fans, and knocked over our telephone poles.
What ensued was several days of misery and mayhem.
No, that’s not what happened.
Life became slightly less convenient, sure, but it wasn’t ruined altogether.
Sally made landfall during the afternoon of September 15th. An advisory was put into effect, telling people to stay home.
It practically blew over that same night.
One of the luxuries of being Deaf is that I get to sleep soundly amidst the crashing of trees and telephone poles. 🙂 I woke up the following morning, on the 16th, and saw that my ceiling fan had stopped working.
Powerless!
Not only was the power out in the household, but all of Escambia county was in the middle of a blackout. We lost power for a couple days and the Internet didn’t come back until some time later.
We had thousands of utility workers from out-of-state to get the power back on.
But the inconveniences didn’t stop there. We also had something of a gas shortage (think late 1970’s, if any of you were around at the time).
Most of our gas stations lost power, and only a select few had operational pumps. A lot of us had to wait in line for an hour to get ourselves a full tank.
What was infuriarating, though understandable, was some people put gas into cans to use at a later time.
Some of them were using gas-fueled generators at home. Common courtesy dictates that we squelch any urge to yell at people for hoarding gas.
We were all in this together, Southern hospitality and all.
We Got Your Back, Partner
In the South, where the elements are marginally more dangerous, people really have each other’s backs.
One of my neighbors offered us a bag of ice as a substitute for the AC. There were food trucks coming into town to keep us fed.
And as I mentioned, workers from other states were actually coming to help us out with the power lines.
It was a humbling experience, that.
No Internet, No Content!
But man!
As a content creator, having NO internet access is akin to getting your tongue ripped out.
This episode got me thinking about my future in the state of Florida. I haven’t made any concrete decisions yet. But as a creator, I need consistent, reliable internet in my house.
I can’t just drive for 20 minutes to the next county so I can post a poem or blog.
Poetry Muse
Oh, yeah! Poems!
Man, I forgot to tell you guys this! If you’re not one of my loyal followers, let me fill you in: I was on a serious poetry kick last week.
I never thought of myself as a poet.
Corey Toomey, World-Renowned Poet? Are you for real?
Yeah, apparently I was for real.
In my back yard, there’s a statue of a lady pouring water into a bird bath (Aquarius?). Here, let me pull up a photo:
The Lady in the Hurricane
So I was in the back of my house, in the Florida room (yeah, that’s a thing, look it up), and watched this lady getting doused relentlessly by the rain.
I thought how miserable she must’ve been to be trapped under the dark, merciless clouds in the middle of a dangerous storm.
Right there, the idea clicked.
The next day at work, my client at the nursing home was sleeping and I pulled out my spiral notebook. I wrote The Lady in the Hurricane in less than an hour. Yeah, baby, yeah!
But I wasn’t going to stop there! No sir!
A day later I wrote The Oaken Crown, an ode to the richness of the human imagination.
Then Eclipse, inspired by a gender-nonconforming friend of mine.
And finally Vultures, about the predatory nature of man.
What a glorious week of churning out poetry! And it all started with a statue in my back yard during a hurricane! Thank you, Sally!
I have a few more poems in the pipeline and it’s all a matter of getting the wording, structure, and balance right. 🙂
Poetry Videos
I’m planning on making YouTube videos for each of my poems. The Lady in the Hurricane video is already out for your viewing/listening pleasure. (Close your eyes and let my dulcet voice carry you through this 2-minute journey). 😀
More Traffic?
I’ve been going back and editing my old blogs to optimize them for search engines. We may or may not get more people on this Blog to interact with.
I don’t know what the end result will be, since I’m still playing around with advertising and search-engine tools. More engagement is always nice.
Thanks for reading and thanks for sticking around! Be sure to Like and Follow the Blog for updates! Email or WordPress, whatever works! 🙂
Corey Toomey 