Category: Bad Weather

Bad Weather, Children, Christmas, Events, Generations, Gratitude, Parents, Relationships, Stories, Storms, Storytelling

Christmas Stockings

gregoryjoel

I don’t know how long it took to get to Swedish Medical Center. I’d never been there before but I knew that on a normal day it was only six or seven minutes from the house. This Christmas Eve night it took hours. It didn’t, but it sure felt like it.

Our arrival turned into a blur though – out of the car with the paramedics grabbing Jennine to steady her across the snow and ice then through the ambulance bay doors and me holding a bundled-up Adrian in one arm and Jennine’s go bag and a diaper bag in the other. Suddenly we were in Labor and Delivery.

I vaguely remember the flurry of activity around Jennine as they got her settled into the labor room. A nurse said something about the labor pains coming much quicker and telling us that it shouldn’t be long now. Someone popped their head in to tell me that my Mom and Dad had a friend bringing them to the hospital in his four-wheel drive. Adrian could stay with them for the night. One problem solved anyway…

The doctor entered the room. Keep in mind that this doctor was a total stranger in a hospital we’d never been to before. He grabbed one of the labor room nurses and asked for an update, never looking or speaking to Jennine or me. That was already two strikes against him. When he groaned and walked back out of the labor room it was strike three. Jennine grabbed my hand and cried out, “Who is this guy? I don’t like him. I want my doctor. It’s all your fault we’re here”.

“It’s going to be okay. I’ll find out what’s going on”. I was a little perturbed to be assigned all the blame for the whole situation. I was pretty damned sure she was present when this whole thing started. After all, it takes two to make this process work. I didn’t ask for the blizzard either.

“Stay here, she barked about the time the latest contraction came on full force. I was thinking no problem as my hand she was gripping went numb. I wasn’t going anywhere.

The nurses finally got Jennine settled in. The monitors were all hooked up and the initial examination was over. The contractions were only three or four minutes apart and our nurse informed us she was almost fully dilated. She was a Godsend. She seemed to be the only one taking the time to pay attention to us. I wish I could remember her name. Back then I would’ve sent her a bottle of twelve-year old scotch and a thank you note.

We had been through La Maze birth classes before Adrian was born and had a refresher course back in October. We had wanted a natural childbirth – at least that’s what I reminded Jennine every time she hollered for drugs as her labor became more intense. I tried to be a calming voice of reason and help her with breathing through the contractions. Apparently, a calming voice of reason wasn’t needed nor appreciated in this situation. They finally came in to do an epidural block.

Our nurse came in and, sensing the tension, she let me know I needed to go downstairs with Adrian; that my parents were almost here. How she knew that I’m not sure as cell phones were still science fiction in 1982. She also mentioned that the doctor had been here since the night before because of the storm. “She’s in good hands.” I thanked her, grabbed Adrian, his diaper bag, and headed downstairs.

I vaguely remember giving Adrian to my mother, hugging my parents – who I hadn’t seen since they got to town – and thanking our friend Mark for getting them here and back home with my son. All I could think of was getting back upstairs. I stayed in the lobby long enough to watch them all drive off into the falling snow and ran for the elevator.

I returned to the labor room and the nurse informed me I better “gown -up”. They were taking her to the delivery room right away. We had been there maybe an hour or so. I said a silent prayer of gratitude for the guy who volunteered his Jeep, the paramedics, nurses, and even the doctor Jennine didn’t like. The time it would have taken an ambulance to arrive would have meant a home delivery. I’d like to think I could’ve done it, but I was so glad I didn’t have to find out. It was going to be okay.

Sometimes I regret not being able to remember all the details of our time in the delivery room. It went so quickly, for which I was appreciative. Jennine had the hard work, but it’s hard to see your wife in pain. The only thing I remember is the doctor saying,” It’s a healthy baby boy”. The nurse took him and cleaned him up. I’m sure they went through all the post-birth baby and mother checklist before he announced, “Here’s your son”.

The one thing I remember quite clearly is that Jennine didn’t want to take him, and the nurse handed Jeremy to me. Her reluctance to take Jeremy was, in hindsight, a red flag but more about that later. I cradled Jeremy in my arms and burst into joyful tears as I saw another beautiful son.

The nurse that had been with us all through labor and delivery took Jeremy back. She told me they were moving Jennine to the maternity ward and taking Jeremy to the nursery. Then she said, “You should try to grab some sleep until we bring Jeremy to your wife’s room. Go into the Nurse’s Lounge and there’s a couch in there to lay down on. I’ll come get you when it’s time.”

I said thank you and felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me. The adrenaline coursing through my body had suddenly shut off and left me drained. It was all over and I had a new son.

I’m not sure how long I got to sleep but when our nurse returned to wake me up, I was suddenly alert and full of energy. “We’re going to bring Jeremy to her room so they’ll both there”, she said as we waited for the elevator. My excitement level made for the longest wait time ever recorded for elevator doors to open – maybe not?.

The nurse opened the door, motioned me in, and closed the door behind me. I entered the room and went to hug Jennine. I was sitting on the bed holding her hand when a maternity floor nurse entered the room with Jeremy. He was stuffed into a little Christmas stocking with a Santa cap on his head.  The nurse picked him up and handed him to Jennine. I still have the picture from all those years ago of Jennine as she held our son for the first time. Her smile radiated love and beauty filling the room as she looked into Jeremy’s eyes. A small joyful tear rolled down her cheek.

I can’t recall the rest of Christmas Day in 1982. I know my parents came back to the hospital to visit and take Adrian and I home. We planned to celebrate Christmas when Jennine and Jeremy came home the next day. My sister had spent Christmas Eve at the DFW airport before they finally cancelled all flights to Denver so she wouldn’t be with us that year and spend Christmas alone. Everything else is stored in memory sections of my brain that I no longer have access to.

I can say that it took a week-and-a-half to dig my car out and the alleyway so I could even get to the street where snowplows had left a huge pile of snow. I used my cross-country skis to get to the nearby Seven Eleven only to find bare shelves. The local media had a hay day with the “Hundred Year Blizzard of ‘82”. Everyone had opinions about the city’s response to the storm and the time it took to clear the streets; most of them beyond negative. Blame was heaped on Mayor Bill Nichols, who had been the only Mayor I’d known since moving to Denver in 1969, costing him his re-election later that year.

None of it really made a difference to me. We had another son. Every parent sees their new child as the most beautiful baby ever. The truth is, if it’s a vaginal birth all babies look like little aliens, but they appear much differently to the parents that waited so patiently for them. I had just received the best Christmas present ever and life would never be the same.

Bad Weather, Christmas, Family, Generations, Relationships, Stories, Writing

Christmas Eve 1982

gregoryjoel

I watched the snow fall outside my study window as I enjoyed my coffee and wrote in my journal. No cars could be found on the street. That was highly unusual on Logan Street, even for Christmas Eve. The cars that were parked out there were virtually covered by the falling snow. An occasional gust of wind piled the snow even higher so they couldn’t be seen from our side of the street. “She probably is in labor”, I muttered to myself. I had no idea how we’d get to the hospital.

I heard Jennine in the back of the house. A few minutes later she was at my study door. Her “good morning” was sidetracked when she looked out the window. “Where did that come from? It was only supposed to be a couple of inches”.

“More like a couple feet is more accurate. I’m going to turn on the news”, I said as I got up from my chair and headed for the living room. The television came to life as I went in the kitchen. “What do you want for breakfast? I’m not fixing any burritos”, I chuckled. It was a long-standing joke that my famous green chili burritos had been responsible for Jennine’s labor with our first son, who was now well awake in his crib. “I got him “, I told her as I turned and walked downstairs.

Coffee mugs were filled, Adrian’s breakfast served, and a plate delivered to my wife in the living room. The TV caught my attention. All the news was about the Christmas Storm that started in the wee hours of the morning. A list of business and government office closures ran across the bottom of the screen. My traditional Christmas Eve half-day and lunch weren’t going to happen. I said a silent prayer that Jeremy, the newest addition to the Joel household, would wait until the snowplows could do their job. I would find out after the fact that it wouldn’t really matter, but more on that later.

We were definitely in for the day, so we sat together in the living room, sharing coffee and hot chocolate, and doing last minute gift wrapping. The news had been replaced by VHS tapes – we’d bought a VCR and that was serious high tech in 1982 – and we watched a Christmas movie together.

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Pexels.com

Jennine called her parents who lived up Lookout Mountain to the west of Denver. They wouldn’t be able to get out until the snowplows arrived either. My parents were staying with friends while they were in town and faced the same situation. My sister was flying in from Fort Worth for the birth of the new addition to the family and to celebrate Christmas together. Unfortunately, the Denver airport was closed – no flights coming in or going out. She sat at DFW Airport for several hours waiting for the weather to clear until it became obvious that reopening wouldn’t be happening anytime soon.

It was great to have time together with just us. Family Christmases are wonderful but somewhat chaotic. We weren’t going anywhere, and no one was coming over. It was quite peaceful except for the persistent sense of anxiety about getting to the hospital should the need arise. The news was now putting out an appeal for anyone with four-wheel drive vehicles to help shuttle paramedics to emergency calls. The ambulances were having trouble getting anywhere in the blizzard.

Jennine had gone throughout the daylight hours without any more contractions. I was holding out hope that Jeremy would be content to make his entrance to the world under better weather conditions. However, from the very beginning, Jeremy always had his own ideas, and they were usually counter to mine.

Jennine and I lived in Fort Worth when Adrian was born. We were part of an HMO so the only hospital we could use for delivery was in North Dallas. When Jennine went into labor with Adrian, I flew down the freeway with emergency flashers on as I darted through Dallas traffic to get her to the hospital. I needn’t have stressed. Jennine ended up being in labor for thirty-one hours before Adrian was born. I silently prayed that if Jennine did go into labor, it would be a long one even though I didn’t want to see her in pain. I didn’t know how Iwas going to get her to the hospital. The idea of delivering a baby scared the daylights out of me. I could do it if need be, I told myself but I didn’t want to find out.

It continued to snow throughout the day. The chain link fence in the backyard disappeared under the blanket of white. My car in the driveway soon followed suite. We thought we’d be spending the rest of an uneventful Christmas Eve relaxing in the comfort of our living room and being generally lazy. I fixed an early dinner, washed the dishes, and Adrian and I retired to the living room. Jennine came in later looking concerned and stated the “we may have a problem”.

“What do you mean?”

She calmly said, “I mean I think I’m in labor” as she slid back on the sofa.

I’m not sure how long I sat in stunned silence as my brain began running hundreds of scenarios; all of which pointed to delivering a baby at home. “How far a part are the contractions? Never mind, tell me when the next one starts and ends.” I went into manager mode. “It’s quite obvious we’re not going to be able to get to the hospital. Hell, I can’t even find my car under all the snow. I’m calling 911”.

I tried to be as calm as possible even though I was totally terrified. Jennine told me her contractions were starting. She finally sighed they were over, and I started to count. I gazed at my watch for what seemed an eternity and then another one started She sighed and said, “another one started. How long?”

“Seven minutes. They’re at seven minutes” as I dialed 911. Jennine still had several hours to go when she was in labor with Adrian. I prayed for similar results, but I knew deep down it was not going to be anything like that. Everyone warned me about second births – they go much quicker. The mother’s body says let’s get this over with as they learned from the first time around.

“911, what’s your emergency”. At least the phones worked!

I explained that my wife was due on the 23rd and just started labor. Our doctor was at St. Joseph Hospital. What were we to do?”

The 911 operator ran down the list of questions all 911 calls receive. Yes, she’s still breathing. No, she’s not bleeding, and her water hasn’t broken. Her contractions are seven minutes apart. After answering all her questions, she told me in a very calm and composed manner that we would have to take an ambulance to the nearest hospital with labor and delivery and a maternity ward – which wasn’t going to be St. Joe’s.

“Okay, okay, but how long until the ambulance gets here?”

“Right now, it looks like it will be four hours until we can get someone out there.” I greeted the news with stone-cold silence. “Sir, are you there? Did you hear me?”

“Yes” I mumbled with a mix of anger and fear. She wasn’t going to last four hours. “Thank you. We’ll be ready”.

“What’d they say?”, Jennine asked.

“Four hours before we can hope the see an ambulance and we have to go to the nearest hospital with a maternity ward”, I declared flatly. “Let’s keep track of the contractions for now”. Concentrating on the time between contractions might hold off some of the terror I was feeling. I thought of that classic line from Gone With the Wind, “I don’t know nothing about birthing no babies”…

I called my parents and told them what was happening: we were waiting for an ambulance, and we’d have to take Adrian to the hospital with us when it got here. Was there any way for them to get to the hospital to get him? Dad said they didn’t know how, but they’d start making some calls to all their friends. I made other calls to friends and family to let everyone know what was going on. Adrian’s diaper bag was ready, and Jennine’s “Go Bag’ was sitting by the front door. Now we wait.

We didn’t have to wait long. It had only been thirty minutes when there was a loud knock on the door. I opened it to find two paramedics in insulated coveralls and a middle-aged gentleman in a heavy coat and a cowboy hat. Apparently, he had volunteered his four-wheel drive Jeep Waggoneer to shuttle paramedics about. I invited them in a they began the same barrage of questions the 911 dispatcher had asked earlier. They finished checking Jennine’s vitals and told us we were going to Swedish Hospital. It was the closest one with a maternity ward. I grabbed Adrian, they grabbed the bags, and we headed out across the snow-covered yard to the Waggoneer on the street.

It’s important to note that it had snowed more than three feet in the previous twelve hours. Jennine was only five foot three and very pregnant (Jeremy was a big baby). This made the seventy-five-foot journey from the house to the car interesting to say the least. I held Adrian with one arm and Jennine with my free hand. The gentleman driver held her other hand as we navigated the path left by the paramedics. We all plowed through the snow until we got to the car. Jeep Waggoneers are larger than a regular Jeep model and can seat four people comfortably unless, like our entourage, there were heavy medical bags and six people. Jennine sat in front and the paramedics, Adrian, and I squeezed in the back. We finally managed to get the doors shut when the driver announced that the windshield wipers were no longer working, and he would have to have the windows down as he and Jennine reached outside to keep the windows clear enough to drive. So, off to the hospital we went with the driver and a very pregnant and in labor Jennine scraped the windows as best they could in the falling snow.

Bad Weather, Birthdays, Children, Choices, Christmas, Love, Marriage, Parents, Thoughts From the Porch

Christmas 1982 – The Beginning

gregoryjoel

It was Denver two days before Christmas in 1982. The due date for the birth of our second son was the twenty-third. I was on Christmas break from classes at the university and Jennine (my first wife) had just started her maternity leave. We put Adrian, our twenty-month-old son, to bed and put the final touches on the gifts being wrapped as we watched a holiday movie together.

Jennine went to get ready for bed and I stepped out onto the front porch to check the weather. The forecast was for a couple of inches of snow. My parents had flown in from Texas the day before and I was hoping for a white Christmas together and to celebrate the birth of our second son. The air was cold and crisp, but only partly cloudy. I didn’t put much stock in accurate weather forecasts and the coming snow. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Jennine and I had married two years before and neither of us were ready for such a major step on life’s journey. She was nineteen. I was twenty-two. We had met at work and dated a short while before she was to leave for college in California. A couple of weeks before her departure she informed me that she was pregnant and not to worry, she had already scheduled an abortion with a clinic in Boulder. I reacted with what I thought was the most honorable way I could – I asked her to marry me. She didn’t say yes right away, but after a couple of days we both decided that’s what we were going to do.

To make a long story short, we were married in August of 1980 and had our first son, Adrian, in April of 1981. He was such a joy, and we were blessed as new parents to have a son with an easygoing personality and demeanor. However, we weren’t planning on a second one so quickly. We had moved to Texas before Adrian was born and back to Denver afterward. I had been laid off. Jennine hated Texas: probably because my job with the railroad kept me away so much. I went back to work for my old company in Denver. The first couple of years were rough. They’d started to smooth out when she found out we were expecting number two…

We lived in a small stucco house in the Washington Park section of Denver. While the surrounding homes were built in the twenties and thirties and far larger, ours was an old farmhouse built in 1890: well before Denver grew farther south. We sat on two lots of land and even still had the old sidewalk to what was the outhouse. I’m told indoor plumbing didn’t come until later. I always thought it gave the backyard a bit of character. It was definitely a talking point.

The first floor was our kitchen, living room, my study, bath, and what would have been the one bedroom originally. We had converted it to a playroom and had two bedrooms in the half-finished basement. The stairs were at the back of the house with a long picture window across the back wall. We had purchased the house the year before and had great remodeling plans, but that would be a lengthy process. Jennine and I both worked full-time – her at a bank and I at a Trust company – but I was finishing my degree and had little time to work on the house. I often joke that I went to college on the ten-year plan.

It had been a long day for both of us, so falling asleep quickly wasn’t a problem. The bed was warm and comfortable. I kissed Jennine good night and curled up for a long winter’s night. At least I thought so…

Now before I tell you the rest of the story, please know that I really am a caring, loving husband. However, it takes me a while to wake up and get my bearings when awakened from a deep sleep – even in extreme situations. So, when I was shaken awake, and Jennine said she thought she was in labor I grunted and rolled over to look at the alarm clock. It read 4:12 AM. I mumbled something about a false labor, told Jennine to time the contractions to be sure, and rolled back over. That probably wasn’t the smartest thing I could’ve done. Jennine shook me again and yelled “you time the contractions”. I was awake then!

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I have to go to the bathroom first”. I climbed out from under the soft warmth of our goose-down comforter and started toward the stairs. “When was your last contraction?”, I queried as I walked out of our room. I didn’t wait for the response.

I went to the restroom and started back down the steps, and I noticed it wasn’t very dark outside. The cloud cover and the falling snow reflected the city lights and I could clearly see the chain link fence around our backyard – or at least part of it. The snow had begun falling sometime after we went to bed and all I could see was the top foot of the fence. She probably is in labor, I thought to myself. The idea of shoveling snow felt like a major inconvenience at 4:30 in the morning.

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Pexels.com

I took care of my business, drank a big glass of water, and returned downstairs to the bedroom. Jennine turned away as I crawled back into bed. “I think it’s just false labor”, she grumbled as I pulled the soft comforter around my neck.

 “Well, let’s time them just to be safe”. I was a tad more awake and far more empathetic than I had been just ten minutes before. Sure enough, we timed her next few contractions, and they were extremely erratic. She wasn’t in labor. She drifted off to sleep. I couldn’t now that I was fully awake, so I eased myself back out of bed so as not to wake Jennine and went back upstairs to make coffee and spend some quiet time alone.

Activism, Anxiety, Bad Weather, Beatitudes, Belief, Common Sense, Communication, Community, Consequences, Emotional Health, Environment, Freedom, God's Economics, Goodness, Grace, Grandchildren, Gratitude, Hope, Listening, Marginalized, Marriage, Miracles, Neighbors, Peace, Service to Others, Spirituality, Stories, Thoughts From the Porch, Transformation, Trust, What Can I Do

The clock is Ticking Again

gregoryjoel

It was sometime during the early years of the Reagan Administration. I can’t remember the date exactly, but I’ve never forgotten the events that night. It was clear and despite the city lights, the stars twinkled brightly on the late winter’s night. I had taken a moment to sit on our big front porch to take in the beauty of the evening before going to bed. I smoked my last cigarette of the day and shut off the lights as I walked through the living room, the kitchen, and down the back stairs to the warmth of our small bedroom in the basement.

Our house was an old farmhouse built in 1890 and sat on two large city lots. It was built long before the area known as Washington Park grew up around it and had much different architecture than the Craftsmen and Victorian homes that came in the early 1900s. It was small – only 950 square feet – and finished in stucco with a flat roof. It even had the old concrete path to where the outhouse would’ve been in its early years. The basement had been finished with two small bedrooms my first wife and I shared next to our boy’s bedroom. It always felt so cozy on a long winter’s night, and I rarely had insomnia issues after sliding into the inviting warmth of the covers and my wife’s arms. It wasn’t much but it was our piece of paradise in the middle of Denver’s urban sprawl.

I’m not sure of the exact time it happened but it was in the early morning hours when sleep is so deep that even one’s dreams are on hold. It was the kind of sleep that we all long for: peaceful and restful. It was also the deep sleep that made it virtually impossible to awaken with a clear mind – the mind remained in that state long after the body was jolted awake. That’s when it happened.

The long, loud scream of the warning sirens blew in the basement window; waning and ebbing as the siren made its circular motion. My wife and I sat up in bed. “What in the hell?”, I demanded as we looked at one another trying to figure out what was up.

 I had grown up with warning sirens in Texas, but there we called them tornado sirens. They were tested monthly so if they ever went off other than 1:00 PM on the first Wednesday of the month it meant you needed to head for a place in your home away from windows and doors and hold on. A tornado was nearby and may hit you soon. North Texas marked the southern end of tornado alley. Growing up in Fort Worth meant having a solemn respect for tornado warnings.

The warning sirens were also called Civil Defense sirens. You see, I grew up during the Cold War between the Soviet Union Eastern Bloc and the West. Both sides had a first-strike capability with the ever-growing stockpile of nuclear weapons. The sirens warned us of an imminent attach by the godless communists. We were supposed to file into the basements of buildings marked as Civil Defense shelters if we were downtown working or shopping (this was BM – Before Malls). If we were elsewhere, such as school, we were supposed to “duck and cover” as if our trusty school desks were to help us survive a nuclear blast. I still remember Tommy Turtle and the black-and-white instructional films (this was BV – before video) that told us how to duck low to the ground, cover our heads, and look away from the blast in case of nuclear attack. It mattered little that we were to be vaporized or brutally burned when the bomb went off. The ostrich approach was probably the best way to go…

Unfortunately, this wasn’t North Texas but Denver, Colorado. In the all the years of junior and senior high school and college I had never heard a warning siren. Nor had I ever seen a tornado in Denver, especially in the winter. They just didn’t happen then (climate change changed that scenario years later). Even if they did, the city wouldn’t be testing the sirens at three o’clock in the morning, so something was going on. I reached over to our bedside alarm clock radio and tuned in to see if there was any news about what was happening. There wasn’t. Was this it? Was this the bomb?

The Cold War had a renewed tension after Reagan was elected President. Saber rattling had become the norm and tensions between East and West were at the highest point since the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1963. The nuclear arms race was in full swing. I had proudly been arrested for civil disobedience at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons facility numerous times (once with Father Berrigan!). Nuclear disarmament and peace were the subjects of many a demonstration, however small those might be. Most folks were content to live in fear if it didn’t interfere with making a living and going about normal daily life. The warning sirens made everything suddenly real.

Maybe this was it. Denver would be a prime target in any attack scenario. It boasted the largest Federal center of anywhere outside of Washington, D.C. and was surrounded by Rocky Mountain Nuclear Arsenal, an Air Force Base, and several other military facilities. The likelihood that this would be our last few moments was real. My mind raced with memories of a recent movie sensation, “The Day After”.

Finally, the sirens stopped. My wife, though jolted awake by the sudden emergency, drifted back off to sleep. My boys never woke up through the whole affair. All things slowly returned to normal though I never quite made it back to sleep that night. It had all been too unsettling. The morning news carried a story about the event. It seems somehow water had gotten in a control room and shorted out the wiring, causing the alarms to go off. We were never in danger, only inconvenienced. The event was soon forgotten, and life went about as usual.

Several years later, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union fell apart and became the Russian Federation, and the Cold War was declared over. Anti-nuke demonstrations faded and the news media found plenty of other things to instill more fear and create more demonstrations over. There were new countries joining the nuclear weapon family. Although they had agendas contrary to the West there has not been the intensity of coverage, nor the fearfulness found in the Cold War years.

2024 is an election year. Many on both sides of the political spectrum say it’s the most important election in America history. I’ve lived long enough to have voted in several “most important” elections. This year really is different though, and for a myriad of reasons. I’ve heard all the arguments but the one that’s been missing is the threat of nuclear catastrophe that is now at its highest point since the 1980s. There may no longer be a Soviet Union but the Cold War between East and West has restarted and could become a “hot” war through miscalculation, misunderstanding, and miscommunication.

Authoritarian rulers like Putin have referred to the nuclear option several times over the last two years in his quest to restore Russian Empire. North Korea improves and expands its nuclear program while other international actors seek to be come nuclear powers. More and more uncertainties enter the equation.

I don’t like fear tactics and that’s not what I hope comes from this story. I hope that this is a subject to be taken seriously when considering election choices in the coming year. Whoever is elected will have the final say over whether we live together or die together. It’s important to consider deeply and prayerfully who we give that power to.

Evaluate real character and integrity. Choose those who demonstrate empathy and compassion for the common good rather than those whose decisions are made for themselves. Who holds up and lives out the values we strive for? Making America great again should be making America what it professes to believe in, and not some idea of selfish, power seekers only seek to make others do their will. Choose wisely. You lives may depend on it…

***I also recommend:

Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War available on Netflix

Bad Weather, Choices, Climate Change, Community, Connection, Creation, Down On the Farm, Events, Family, Farmers Markets, Goodness, Grace, Gratitude, Hope, Letting Go, Marginalized, Non-Profits, Opal's Farm, Pets, Positive Thinking, Prayer, Preparation, Regeneration, Relationships, Rescue Animals, Service Organizations, Service to Others, Spirituality, Texas, Thoughts From the Porch, Trinity River, Unity Unlimited, Inc., Urban Farming

Burrrr…

gregoryjoel

The scene beyond my window is rather drab. A blast of cold Arctic air exploded across North Texas yesterday afternoon. It brought with it the cutting icy North wind that plagues the Southern plains every winter. The “feels like” temperatures this morning were in the single digits and they’re predicting eighty-plus hours below freezing and sleet for this evening. Folks in these parts are understandably nervous. Ice brings out the worst in Texas drivers and the memory of Winter Storm Uri in 2021 is still fresh to anyone who lived here then. The power grid crashed, Texans went for days without power and water, and 246 people died from storm-related issues.

Last year saw a major ice storm at the end of January. We were at the Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association Conference in Dallas and left early because of the roads. One of our employees ended up staying at the motel that night. One night turned into a week. Texans do not do well in cold weather. It doesn’t storm often but when it does look out!

Fortunately, we’ve had ample time to prepare for this Arctic visitor. Store shelves are empty of non-perishables and bottled water. Gas tanks are full and homes lucky enough to have a generator are standing by. People take the weather forecast a bit more seriously since the winter of ’21.

( Opal’s Farm and the frozen Trinity River February 2021 )

Personally, I haven’t had much time to prepare our house. I still must make a run to Home Depot. My neighbor said they had some outdoor faucet covers hidden in the back of the store. Information like that is like finding gold. We try to take care of each other in our neighborhood. I have, however, taken steps to prepare Opal’s Farm the best we can to save our winter crops. Frost cloth has been double-spread on the bio-intensive section and several of the hundred-foot rows. Prayers have been said, fingers have been crossed, and if I had a rabbit’s foot, I’m sure I’d be holding it close. We’ll keep you posted…

On a lighter, and somewhat warmer note (it was cool but warmer yesterday), we moved Opal’s Farm Stand hours to Saturday afternoons from 1:30 PM to 4:00 PM. We found his to be more convenient for our neighbors and the traffic on Sylvania isn’t rushing between jobs. We had several customers yesterday afternoon. This complements our mornings at Cowtown Farmers Market and our delivery for Hao’s Grocery and Café. We can harvest once a week to bring quality fresh produce to our community.

Anyway…

My fur-babies don’t seem to be bothered by the single-digit temperatures. They are out running around and playing as I sit here. Sitting here watching them got me to thinking about this blog. I’ve always called it “Thoughts From the Porch” because that was the place my thoughts and coffee ran freely since this journey began. I no longer spend my mornings on the front porch. It’s not because it’s cold. When you smoke it really doesn’t matter if it’s the summer Texas heat or the winter freeze, you’re driven to suffer outside.

However, that changed on November 1st of last year. That’s the day I quit smoking. I’ve been cigarette-less since then. The cravings have become less severe most of the time. The operative word being “most”. Other days – not so much. Staying off the porch has been a good move so here I sit. I still get a good view of the world through the patio door next to my office. It’s a constant reminder of God’s goodness and grace in our lives.

Maybe it’s time to find another name for this? Let me know your thoughts!

Please stay warm and safe through this cold snap. Stay inside, make it a family day or a day of introspection. Enjoy the time and pray the lights don’t go out…