It was about 5 a.m. when Ginny’s iPhone started making the very annoying storm alarm. (In my infinite wisdom, I had deactivated such alarms on my Android phone.)
“Maybe we should go downstairs,” she said.
“Go for it, sweetheart,” I replied and rolled over to go to sleep.
I awoke to no power. Damn! And a text from my neighbor that a huge hickory tree had fallen on her carport, about 25 yards west of my top-floor bed. There’s that providence thing again.
As I surveyed the damage, I gazed at the six or seven huge trees surrounding my house, any of which could fall and kill me or my family.
These are the same trees that bring me great joy on a beautiful early spring night as I sip a beer in my backyard and gaze at the sunset. I feel like I am in the redwood forest.
Fortunately, the Research by the Centre for Decision Analysis and Risk Management says I have a one in 10 million chance of dying from a falling tree. That makes my lifetime risk one in a hundred thousand.
That’s a thousand times lower than my lifetime risk of dying in a car wreck (1 in 100); a fall (1 in 100); getting shot and killed (1 in 500); cancer (1 in 5); heart disease (1 in 5); or dying in general (1 in 1).
So the trees stay unless they are clearly dying.
We don’t have hurricanes (Katrina excepted), forest fires, earthquakes or mudslides in Jackson. But we do have a lot of tornados and rainfall. When those two combine, trees come down. Wind and gooey soil are not a good combination.
Something like 150,000 homes lost power in the metro area, almost one in five. Two thousand workers immediately began to make repairs as more thunderstorms did more damage.
The Emmerichs and our little Rebel Drive cul-de-sac had bad luck. Just six homes without power. Very low priority. Who knows when we’ll get back on the grid.
I suppose I could have blown $7,000 for a generator. But my guess is as soon as I installed it: 1) My power would never go out again, and 2) When it did, the generator would fail for lack of maintenance. That would just make me more mad.
Besides, I have lots of friends and family nearby. I look at this as a great excuse to have a slumber party. So sad that it takes pure materialistic desire for cooler air to make this happen! Shout out to the Sanlis and the Archers for their neighborly hospitality in a time of need!
My battery operated temperature gauges showed the non-air conditioned temperatures of my house varied from 77 in the morning to 81 at the hottest (around 6p). Are we really such wimps that just an extra seven degrees makes us miserable?
I have seven battery-operated LED lanterns that work like a charm. Light was not the problem. I really wanted to try out sleeping without AC and see how hard it would be, but Ginny vetoed this.
Being AC homeless was really pretty easy. I keep an overnight bag. I sleep like a log. All I need in the morning is coffee. It was kind of fun getting out of my routine.
Meanwhile, my yard is full of debris. I do my own yard work, both for the exercise, to save a buck (I’m Scottish) and for the fun. As my former yardman and friend T. C. James (may he rest in peace) said to me when I asked him why, at age 85, he was still doing yard work, he said, “Because I enjoy making things beautiful.”
My yard is not the big problem but rather the four acre historic cemetery behind my house. I think it’s the old Fondren plantation cemetery. It was a thicket when I first moved in. After 20 years, I have made it beautiful. It’s like having a country home in the middle of the city and I don’t have to pay taxes on it! Picking up those limbs and sticks is a monumental task. Oh well.
Getting back to that Scottish blood, one of the worst things is throwing out all the food in your fridge. Waste is my pet peeve. I can’t resist trying to salvage some of it, which usually means the misery of the power outage is followed by severe gastroenteritis. I can’t help myself.
As luck would have it, this all happened the weekend of the annual Mississippi Press Association, one of the busiest weekends of the year for me. For the first time ever, it was at the Refuge in Flowood.
Despite being all booked up, Ginny managed to find a last minute room at the Refuge the first night the power was out, so that was kismet.
The MPA convention is much diminished from its glory days of the late 1990s. But we’re still standing, far less flush but scrappy like the early days of the local journalism business. In a weird way, I almost prefer it like this (if we can survive.)
Our survival is far from guaranteed. Newspapers are shutting down right and left as Big Tech’s oligopoly marches on, wiping out everything in its path.
To survive, we must do more with less, all at a time when many people don’t want to roll up their sleeves and work hard. It’s that providence thing again.
Fortunately, I’ve got a team of true believers — editors and publishers who are willing to work hard for a cause. Local news is indeed a cause. It’s hard to believe in a country as affluent as the United States cities and counties with tens of thousands of people have little if any local news.
Yes, I know there is social media. But with all due respect, rumors posted on Facebook are not the same as professionally researched and verified local news stories. That’s why almost every college and university has a journalism department.
Almost every bit of local news on Google and Facebook comes from a real journalist. These platforms get the benefit of our hard work yet pay nothing. There are bills in Congress to change this, but Big Tech and their armies of lobbyists keep stamping them out. Check out the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.
I was pleased that both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor and lieutenant governor came to the press association to make a campaign speech and take questions. It’s a good sign that these powerful and successful politicians still understand the importance of local newspapers, something each one mentioned in their remarks.
In a later column, I will write about their style and remarks. It will still be relevant. It seems I have run out of space for the print edition!
