What happened?
I have been sending this out religiously for the past 14 years since I retired, always on the 15th of the month. This month was no exception, but I fear the internet gremlins got in the way, or my internet connection was not up to the task where I was at the time. (Me on the East coast all but incommunicado and Janice at home in California.) I explained further below and in the event it did not go through, I am resending it to you again. Sorry.
The baby is home!
The baby of our family, 31 year old Cassie Anna came to visit with her guy Art and her 3 kids. 10 year old sweet Kayla Marie, 5 year old Ryan the terrible (who comes by his name honestly) and 18 month old puddle of love Lindy who we tried to hide in a dresser drawer when her mother returned home.
They flew in from Astoria, Oregon for a 10 day visit. This was a chance for Cassie to return to her family home and to show the area off to Art. While here, we took the kids to Disneyland, swimming at the beaches, our Monarch butterfly grove, our one of a kind farmers market ( part carnival, part street fair to have our faces painted) and of course, gum alley. Then, for a break, we went on hay rides, worked our way through a hay maze, walked through a petting zoo, picked pumpkins and visited a haunted house.
This is a must see tourist attraction for kids. Started by students after WWII, it covers two walls of the alley 15 feet high and 70 feet long with well over a million pieces of chewing gum. Seen by some as 'disgusting' and others as unique art, no kid walks by without leaving his contribution. Meanwhile, Cassie and Art got some serious grown up time together without the little darlings.
The kids loved our local Monarch butterfly grove.
Team Rubicon
When we first married and the kids
were young, I spent a year volunteering to build our new church. We were on
the tail end of building our house and it seemed like the right thing to do. On
week-ends Janice would hold the fort with the 3 kids we had at the time, to free me to show up and
help other church members frame the building. I also ran the tractor we owned
to help prepare the grading for the site. Much like Janice and I did for our homes,
our church scraped up all the money it could and spent it all on materials,
leaving very little for labor. The upside was that we got far more homes (and
church) for the money. The downside was that we had to build them ourselves.
As to the building of our church, I
can remember the day we had to bore five 30” wide, 20-foot-deep caissons. [A
caisson is a deep hole bored with a drilling rig for the purpose of filling it
with concrete and steel rebar to provide a foundation for a building that is on
a hillside or on some type of ‘problem’ soil]
As the huge drill bit was
pulled out of each hole, some dirt would fall back into the bottom. Since the
hole had to be ‘clean’ before filling it with concrete, this loose soil at the
bottom had to be removed. There was no way to remove it but to get someone to
go down with a bucket to scoop it up and have the bucket pulled to the surface.
The problem was, the hole was barely as wide as your shoulders so even if
someone was lowered down, it would not be wide enough to crouch down to get at
the loose dirt.
The solution, I brilliantly
thought, was to tie someone’s feet securely and lower him upside down with the
crane so that he could get at the loose soil at the bottom, then cover his face
with a cloth as the bucket was pulled up not to have dirt fall onto his face,
eyes and nose. We needed a volunteer that was young, dumb, heavily insured,
easily replaced and wouldn’t be missed. I was unanimously chosen.
Later, I led a Royal Ranger
troop for a year. (A church affiliated Boy Scout Troop) I organized places to
visit and experiences they would never have had, culminating with a
presentation by Jeana Yeager of an award for 3 of the boys to attend Space
Camp in Huntsville Alabama. [Jeana Yeager co-piloted, along with Dick Rutan,
the first non-stop, non-refueled, 9-day flight around the world in the Voyager
aircraft in 1986. She was the recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal from
President Ronald Reagan]
Stay with me here, as there
is a point to all this chest puffing. When I retired in 2004, we embarked on
Pee-Wee’s big adventure traveling from home to home, and it seemed impractical
to do anything hands on, so we began financially supporting charitable causes
in a more serious way. We have always tithed in traditional ways supporting our
church, but we went rogue too, by funding over 100 cleft palate surgeries for
children though an organization called ‘Smile Train’. We support clean water
projects through an organization call ‘Charity Water’ and make micro loans through ‘Kiva’ for entrepreneurs around the world trying to get on their feet. Later, we became serious supporters of "Doctors Without Borders", "Tunnel To Towers" and an orphanage in Vietnam. There
are hundreds of worthwhile causes and charities but we picked a few where
we are trying to have an impact.
That said, I was still frustrated
and felt that something was missing. It felt that I was practicing my faith
like a city cowboy (all hat, no cattle). Or, like the French say, “Like a crocodile”
(big mouth, little hands). For years after I retired, I looked for some way I
could express my faith through a practical service of some kind. I contacted
the Red Cross but there was nothing that could be made to work. I worked with ‘Habitat
for Humanity’, but the homes they were building were far from where we lived. I
contacted ‘Doctors Without Borders’ and other emergency rescue type organizations,
but aside from my not being a doctor I thought I could help with some aspect of
logistics and organization. No dice. Then, when I got my pilot's license, I
hoped that there would be some way I could tie that into some service. Nada. Each
time the issue was the same; our moving about every 4 months precluded getting involved
with anything with any continuity.
Then it happened. I saw a
story about a volunteer organization called ‘Team Rubicon’. They are comprised largely
of ex-military folks like myself and what they officially refer to as ‘ass kicking civilians who want to get shit
done’. With a tag line of "We do disasters", I thought 'what's not to love'? What they do, simply put, is to deploy after a disaster (think
Katrina, Puerto Rico, Houston or my namesake Michael) in recovery strike teams,
critically needed to help the shell-shocked victims in the weeks preceding the
national guard, FEMA or other charitable organizations showing up.
This is not some schlocky outfit on their first rodeo. They respond with millions of dollars of equipment, or ‘weapons of mass construction’ as they refer to it, their own food preparation trailers and tractor trailer mounted bathrooms for their volunteers to be self-sufficient and avoid needing any local resources. This touched on my skill set and interests perfectly. Construction/ destruction, organization and logistics. Just like flying, I was made for this. Had I known of this organization I would have been all in for the past 8 years. Better late than never, I guess.
This is not some schlocky outfit on their first rodeo. They respond with millions of dollars of equipment, or ‘weapons of mass construction’ as they refer to it, their own food preparation trailers and tractor trailer mounted bathrooms for their volunteers to be self-sufficient and avoid needing any local resources. This touched on my skill set and interests perfectly. Construction/ destruction, organization and logistics. Just like flying, I was made for this. Had I known of this organization I would have been all in for the past 8 years. Better late than never, I guess.
Last summer I started to take
the FEMA training (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and recently got
certified. I then became a member of a Team Rubicon recovery strike team who
spend a week or two on scene until the reinforcements arrive to take over to
help rebuild. We are not part of FEMA but do take their training and are
certified by them.
Our tasks typically are to do things like cover roofs with tarps to minimize additional rain damage to homes in the first days, cut trees to clear roads in the suburbs, move tons of debris in outlying areas further down the food chain for overwhelmed authorities so that people can get back into their homes. Homeowners are never charged for the service.
Our tasks typically are to do things like cover roofs with tarps to minimize additional rain damage to homes in the first days, cut trees to clear roads in the suburbs, move tons of debris in outlying areas further down the food chain for overwhelmed authorities so that people can get back into their homes. Homeowners are never charged for the service.
How bad is it? Well, it is
hard to get your head around the 3-punch blow so many people suffer as seen
below. They lose their homes, find that their community is in tatters, then
realize that they no longer have a job to return to, to recover.
So, this is what is left of my house. I guess I will...
simply walk through my neighborhood to...
my job.
We see a big disaster unfold
on TV and we follow the story for several days until something new and more
interesting comes along. Like Trump Making America Great Again or something.
Meanwhile, these people are still in the same place with no home, community or
job to go back to. Their recovery will go on for months or years. Soon, another disaster will catch our interest and we forget all about them.
I now keep a pre-packed ‘go’
bag in my closet(s) and I am ready to board a flight to anywhere in North America
on a moment’s notice when deployed. The next time a serious disaster
unfolds somewhere in the US or Canada, I expect to be there, unless we are in
Europe at the time. Then again, I am on the international team also. Team Rubicon provides air transportation, accommodations, and feeds you. An
alternative Christian sister organization is called ‘8 Days of Hope’. They
refer to their volunteers in a more sensitive politically correct manner.
This is my first deployment,
so I am writing this from Operation Silver Sun, in New Bern, North Carolina. Hurricane Florence hit here recently, killing 32 people and cutting the town off from the outside world with all the flooding. It has been pretty physically
demanding work so I don’t expect I will be able to do this for much more than
20 years. Food and transportation were fine. ‘Accommodations’ were provided also
if you don’t take the term too seriously or literally. Mine consists of a thin mattress and sleeping bag in the firehouse exercise room. It is far
more than many of the folks we are trying to help have. I am scheduled to return home by the weekend. Teams are deployed in 'waves', each lasting a week. Ours consisted of 67 people broken down in 6 person strike teams. I was not deployed earlier because we had family visiting. I will have more to say on all of this next month when this is over.
Isn’t it great being retired?You get to do exactly what you want to do, whenever you want. God is good.
Care to join me?
The roof
Last month I wrote that we were having our roof re-done. It was a whirlwind of activity but with a crew of up to 9 people, it was done in a jiffy. The irony did not escape me that the roof I installed 34 years ago lasted 29 years and only had to be replaced when woodpeckers had their way with it, but the one done by 'professionals' had to be replaced after 5 years.
Remnants from hurricane Michael? No, our roof project underway.
When the roofing was stripped last month, a message hidden for 34 years was revealed for only the 3rd time. The first time when I built the house, once when it was reroofed 5 years ago and again this month. I put the 25 foot high message up for Valentine's day when we were under construction so Janice could see it from the freeway 1 mile away while driving home.
Roofers wondering.... what the....?
My favorite mother in law and herself.
Humpty Dumpty put back together again.
