Sometimes, Nature's a real mother...

Photo by Glenn Tucker
A crew of rescue workers aboard a U.S. Coast Guard boat rescue a man from the ocean about 1/8th of a mile from where he was swept in near Thunder Hole as seen from Ocean Drive in Acadia National Park. Officials say a large wave in Maine's Acadia National Park swept people into the sea.

Bangor Daily News photo by Bill Trotter

Bryan Daigle of the Acadia National Park Fire Department uses a telescope Sunday to keep an eye on the turbulent water off Thunder Hole for anyone who might be in the water. A powerful wave from the storm surge created by Hurricane Bill crashed onto sightseers around noon Sunday, dragging at least three people into the water and injuring nearly a dozen others.

Lots of news in our neck of the woods lately. Hurricane Bill went by our coast and whipped the ocean here into a frenzy. We're just coming off a new moon, which means higher tides than normal, and then Bill brought some pretty rough winds and hugely high seas. The roads in some areas of Mount Desert Island were closed to traffic, and a group of people got smacked pretty hard by a rogue wave. Three were swept into the ocean, and one of them, a little girl from New York, died. It was a rough day for my ranger friends in Acadia National Park. Even three hours later, the road near Thunder Hole was still closed. Thunder Hole is about a mile and a half from our home.

Normally I have a pretty harsh opinion about people who get too close to nature and become her victims. Darwin in action, I say. But from what I can gather, this crowd was not where it shouldn't be - instead, one big-ass rogue wave crashed up onto the shore and soaked them, knocking many down and into the very solid rocks and smashing their bones. And a little girl died. That can't have been her fault. My heart goes out to her family and friends.

Nature here can be beautiful and brutal, and that was certainly the case Sunday. Those waves were spectacular, which is why thousands of people went to check them out. Only sometimes nature is unpredictable and tragedies happen. Nature can indeed be a real mother.

Here is the Portland Press Herald story on the weather.
Here is the Bangor Daily News story on the Acadia tragedy.
Here is the CNN link to the story.
Even the Boston Globe ran a story, and with some canned video of Thunder Hole and live shots of the surf near Portland (about 150 miles from here).

Today didn't so much dawn as it just became light. Rain fell all night and it is still pretty cloudy and damp and drizzly out there. And humid. Lawns are beautiful and green with this weather, but wooden structures are rotting where they stand. Jeez. Some days it seems you can't win for losing.

Aaahhhhhhhh

The weather broke. It is actually cool this evening. We are not sweltering. Hurray.

And because everyone else is posting it and talking about it, here is that great clip of Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank giving a righteous smack-down to some mouth-breathing idiot at a recent town meeting. If Designing Women's Virginia Sugarbaker were a snarky gay Congressman, she'd be Barney Frank. No shit.



I only wish I was that quick on my feet. Damn.

For the record, if you have the knowledge and tools to cure people of their suffering, you should do that.

If you withhold those tools and knowledge until you are paid exorbitant amounts of money, you should be prosecuted for extortion.

Period.

My opinion on health care. You got a different one? Write about it in your blog.

a new low

We're in tough shape, folks.

It has rained or been so humid for the past eight weeks that it makes any kind of outdoor work essentially impossible. That means aside from a single job indoors and the one where I had to refund all the money I made, I have been out of work. As a self-employed contractor, this means I have had no income. I also do not qualify for unemployment compensation.

Laura has been out of work since she got laid off by the Census Bureau and the feds and the state apparently don't like to talk or deal with each other when it comes to unemployment, so she's had nothing coming in either.

Eight weeks of rain has made us deficient in vitamin D, depressed as hell, and now we have a hard time moving. Why? Because we've been cooped up inside for so long that we are out of shape and a simple trip up a flight of stairs today was enough to set me panting for several minutes.

It is difficult to stay upbeat when we are up against it this hard. My savings account is down to almost nothing. I have less than $200 in my checking account. Rent is due Friday. Laura's car needs to have new (used, but new to us, and with some tread left) tires mounted and a tail light repaired in order to be inspected, and the old sticker ran out at the end of June. I'm pretty sure my truck needs a new catalytic converter and I need to spend some time getting rid of some rust and patching things. Only if the weather is nice enough for me to work on my truck, I feel like I should be doing something to earn money, only the things I have lined up right now need it to be substantially drier than it is.

This is frustration and angst and depression and hard times all rolled into one. We're just not sure what to do. Do we close out the savings account entirely to pay the rent? I suppose we might have to. What about next month? And then there is the phone/cable/internet/electric/etc. bills. We can't dump the cable without incurring bill weirdness to do with the phone and internet. They're all bundled together. And I do use the internet to communicate with clients. Although lately those conversations have been along the lines of "so, it's still raining and too wet to work, I'll check in next week to see if it has dried out at all..." Gah.

This is killing me.

And to top it all off, the church of my childhood (Catholic) has pledged two million dollars to help fight and repeal the law that will (would) allow Laura and I to get married. They're even closing schools and selling churches to raise cash to pay their bills and fund this important work. Asshats. Maybe if they hadn't had to pay out all those zillions of dollars to people who had been molested by priests for all those years, they might not have to be selling churches now, but still. I suppose I am glad that institution is in such a weakened condition for this fight. I'd rather fight it now than fight the church of 20 years ago before they had to start selling some of their holdings. Bleh.

So that's where I'm at, kids. Broke and nearly broken. Damp, dank, depressed and discouraged. We have some food because we bought in bulk a couple weeks ago when some things were on sale, so our grocery bill will be pretty light for a little while anyway. But this is grim stuff to say the least.

Any ideas would be appreciated. If anyone has a line on whoever is in charge of the weather, I'd love it if you could call in a favor and get me a few nice weeks. You'd think after all that snow we had this winter, we'd catch some kind of break in the summer. Apparently not. Phoo.