Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
I’ve come to think of this post as one where you come for the music and stay for the conversation—so feel free to drop a note. The diarist gets to sleep in if she so desires and can show up long after the post is published. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug.
Join us, please.
Good morning everyone.
There are mornings when I’m conflicted in both mood and outlook. While I thought of spending the next hour or so writing about the WWI Battle of Belleau Wood and my visit to that site many years ago, I won’t. There are many more qualified community members here to remind us of our country’s sacrifice of blood and treasure and I refuse to succumb to the lure of our President’s ignorance and inability to understand personal sacrifice and public service. So I’m facing my conflicting mood by highlighting something good in this world—a handful of people who are doing a small thing, in a small way, in the face of an overwhelming disaster.
Hurricane Laura hit the Louisiana/Texas coast last Thursday as the most powerful storm that has made landfall here since 1856. It has taken out electrical infrastructure, destroyed municipal water facilities, destroyed billions of dollars of property, and is responsible for at least 17 deaths in Texas and Louisiana. This storm hit about 200 miles west of where I live. The storm and its devastating effects were in the news for a few days but you’d be hard pressed to find in-depth national coverage since then, save for the President’s brief visit to the area. Anyway, the suffering remains and there are parts of the state that have no power, no water, a weakened infrastructure, and remnants of what were strong and thriving communities; and all this in the Louisiana heat.
This past Monday two of the women that work in the office (the youngest employees we have) circulated an email to the employees explaining that they were loading up a small trailer and two cars and taking supplies to the affected area this weekend. They asked for donations of anything we could spare along the lines of food and water and essential supplies. My boss (one of women was his daughter) quietly told them they could use company resources to help with storage and logistics and they approached me to make that happen. We cast the net a little wider to some of our colleagues in the filed and—as you might imagine—the response was immediate and even a little surprising to those of us who have been on the receiving end of the destructive nature of such storms.
This morning I am going to work a bit early to open warehouses and organize a volunteer force of workers and staff. Except for three crews I’ve scheduled for emergency work in our area, almost every single employee will be there on their own time to handle what has turned into a tide of individual outpouring. I have trucks heading to Baton Rouge and New Orleans and a few other cities around to collect donations. The two cars and small trailer have been replaced by our large hauling trailers and numerous work trucks with hitches and drivers. We have pallets of water and food and supplies arriving by the hour; we have monetary donations from companies wanting to help defray the expenses. Those two women, wanting little more than to put together a few hundred dollars worth of supplies and head into the wreckage, have found themselves almost overwhelmed with offers of help.
We spoke yesterday afternoon about what needed to be done before Saturday morning and one of the realities we had to face was the overwhelming nature of the need and the infinitesimally-small amount of good all this work and supplies will be in the face of almost total destruction. One can’t help but be inspired by the courage and determination of a small number of people determined to stop the tides, to slow the sun’s rise, to face the inevitable knowing that it will, in the end, win out. I can’t but admire their selflessness and even their youthful naïveté.
We can make a difference. All of us. In small ways and with only a bailing can. One shelter at a time, one family at a time, one person at a time. These are the people, unheralded and unrecognized, who change the world--truly.
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From All Music: Bruce Springsteen had become increasingly downcast as a songwriter during his recording career, and his pessimism bottomed out with Nebraska. But Born in the U.S.A., his popular triumph, which threw off seven Top Ten hits and became one of the best-selling albums of all time, trafficked in much the same struggle, albeit set to galloping rhythms and set off by chiming guitars. That the witless wonders of the Reagan regime attempted to co-opt the title track as an election-year campaign song wasn't so surprising: the verses described the disenfranchisement of a lower-class Vietnam vet, and the chorus was intended to be angry, but it came off as anthemic
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Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?
