Category: News

A plethora of tornadic activity

Published on by NouveauSoileau2 Comments

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog today for an update from the National Weather Service. There is a tornado WARNING in effect for the area directly above your head.

Well, maybe not directly, but that’s just what it feels like when you’re in the middle of a storm and suddenly herded into the basement. In my case, the basement in question was beneath the Cathedral and I was surrounded by about a thousand middle school students.

OK, so it only sounds like a thousand in a basement hallway after we’ve been sitting on the hard linoleum floor for 45 minutes.

But yes — this morning Tras and I were innocently attending Mass, which incidentally was the day that the middle schoolers at the parish school also had Mass. Blissfully singing along, we were — when abruptly the piano trailed off and Father announced, “There’s a tornado warning — let’s all head to the basement!”

When a Man of God speaks, you listen.

So we all trailed downstairs, speaking only in hushed, are-we-gonna-die tones. The children were instructed to sit in the hallway along the wall and, being a good Catholic school veteran myself (although my experience was directly with Catholic School Nuns) I did obediently sit along the wall with them. I yanked Tras down to the floor with me; he, being a newly minted Catholic, wasn’t quite as responsive to instructions from Catholic-school teachers.

It wasn’t our first foray into the basement this tornado season. Last Friday, the first Tornado Warning was issued for our county — a situation about which we were blissfully unaware until I received a telephone call from my mother.

An Aside

This wasn’t the first time I’d gotten a Tornado Warning from Mom. About 15 years ago, the phone rang around 11 o’clock at night. I was already in bed, exhausted from spending the day at the Oaks, which is (for the non-Kentuckians among us) the race for fillies the day before the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs.

Oaks has become a tradition in Louisville as a more sedate day at the races than the Derby, which brings out millionaires and mouthbreathers alike for a day of partying at the Downs. Still, I’d spent a day dressed up and drinking mint julips; I was whipped.

Then, the phone. It was my mother’s voice, and when you hear  your mother’s voice when you’ve been awakened from a deep sleep, it sounds something like the Voice of God. In this case, the Voice said, “Get in the bathtub, Ellen. There’s a tornado headed right for your house!”

The bathtub instruction was added because, at the time, I was living in a house without a basement. But no matter, The Voice had instructed me to get to the bathroom, and get I did. Springing from bed and grabbing baby Claire (now 16) from her crib, I launched myself toward the bathroom. I don’t think I became fully conscious until I was almost in the tub itself.

Back to Last Friday

So anyway, Friday evening Mom again calls, this time with less panic-inducing instructions, which were to turn on the TV and listen to what they were saying. We were again under a tornado warning. Still the dutiful daughter, I complied, and we all sat around listening to the weatherman tell us about the incomprehensible radar information appearing on the screen, which was indicative of tornadic activity.

Now, I’ve heard the word “tornado” and experienced “tornado” first-hand since I was a small fry; I did, after all, live through the Super Outbreak that occurred throughout the midwest and southeast in April 1974. But in all that time, I’ve never heard it referred to as “tornadic activity,” and the term strikes me as frighteningly hilarious and ridiculously verbose.

Indeed, why have a tornado when you can have “tornadic activity”? Tornadic, tornadic, tornadic. My son Christopher remarked with a completely straight face, “I can honestly say I have never heard that word until today.” Me neither, son.

So when Tornadic Activity Weatherman announced Friday evening that the hot-zone for the aforementioned tornadics was between the two very roads which bound my subdivision, I herded my offspring, plus one visiting friend, down to the basement for some quality time with the basketball hoop, toy cars and swing.

No such luck this morning, when all I had to entertain me was Tras, the iPhone and some random middle-schoolers. As Tras and I updated the moving weather map on our Weather Bug apps, the girls sitting next to me wanted to know if I liked to shop. (What is it, tattooed on my forehead or something? Sheesh.)

They also asked if I had any cool apps — a rather non-so-subtle hint that they’d just love to get their textie little fingers on my phone, I’m sure — so I showed them the face melter.

They are cute girls, as you can see, even before I melted their faces. They quickly became bored with making polite chit-chat with somebody’s mom they didn’t really know, and went back to drawing on the paper the teachers provided. After a bit, they trooped reluctantly upstairs for school; we rejoined Father in the church after an hour-long gap in morning Mass. Soon we were back outdoors, which still seemed to contain most of Lexington.

Looking at the weather systems brewing west of here, I have a feeling this isn’t the end of the week’s tornadic activity. But maybe if I just say it repeatedly, I’ll scare all tornadic everything away. It’s scared me enough already.

Elizabeth’s journey comes to an end

Published on by NouveauSoileau5 Comments
Photo from Facebook

I remember when John Edwards was announced as John Kerry’s running mate for president; part of what I thought was so appealing about him was his wife. His intellectual equal (in fact, I seem to recall he was somewhat in awe of her) who had suffered the loss of a child, and gone on to become a older mother, I felt an instant kinship with her. And I wasn’t alone. Many people came to admire Elizabeth Edwards as the story of her life unfolded before us.

When the news of Edwards’ death came to me last night, via an NPR news update as I drifted off to sleep, I thought of the woman that I didn’t know personally, and only barely followed through the news. Yet it’s undeniable that she had an effect in this world. Through the tragedies she suffered in her life, she became a role model who offered encouragement to those facing similar trials to face them with grace.

What struck me, though, as I listened to more obituary information about her this morning as I got ready for work, was the fact that today we seem to be so taken by surprise people who face tragedy with grace that it must be remarked on with awe. It seems a mark of our modern society that we don’t feel we should have to suffer any kind of inconvenience, much less real grief and tragedy. Those who do can feel isolated in their personal crisis; in this put-on-a-happy-face world, no one wants to hear about loss.

I should know. I’ve experienced it, in spades. And yet, while it does make me who I am, it doesn’t define me. Life is tragic — just look at any great work of world literature and find one theme that in some way doesn’t deal with the trials we all must face. I lost my father when I was only 25 years old; my mother was made a widow before she was 50. I lost my first child due to a heart defect, when she wasn’t strong enough to survive the surgery to repair it. And I endured the end of my first marriage, with the attendant recriminations about the affect such a split would have on my children.

Elizabeth Edwards dealt with similar problems, and some I thankfully have not faced — cancer, the infidelity of a spouse — and has written about her journey. I rarely write about mine, mostly because I have never felt what I’ve been through is of enough interest to others to share.

But what I now see is that it’s not just the hard times that make a strong person —  it is the grace we are able to summon to endure what we must that marks our character. My aim is to use the gifts God has given me to not only successfully travel life’s harder roads, but also to extend what help I can to others who might be finding the journey difficult. Elizabeth Edwards’ example to all of us on how to live, and die, with courage, and allowing her life story to comfort others, I think, is what made her so inspirational.

Rainy days and Mondays

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It’s been a soggy weekend. Louisville on Derby Day received two inches of rain. Derby hats, as you can see, were severely threatened.

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On Sunday, roads were closed all over the state. Dams washed away, menacing innocent towns. There are slim rivers running down my basement walls.

Yesterday morning at Mass, Father abandoned the sprinkling rite, whereby we all are doused/blessed with Holy Water, he said, “for the obvious reasons.” Apparently, when it comes to water, we’d been blessed enough. About the time he made this announcement, I noticed a rather fast-moving stream barreling down one of the enormous pillars inside the church.

This was at 9 am. By 8 o’clock that night, the rain still poured down. My children cheerfully (and I use that term loosely) performed their Sunday evening duties, taking out the trash and placing the cans at the curb for Monday-morning collection. They looked damp yet rather cute. The photo’s not much to speak of; I was standing on the porch trying to keep the camera dry and at such times I apparently lose focus.

Isn’t the grass a lovely shade of green, though? All verdant and growing, thanks to the nearly four inches of rain. Rain that, on a less cosmic scale, has prevented me from getting out there and getting dirty by grubbing in the garden.

Here you see the tense scene on my window sill.

These poor things have been languishing in an inch of soil in egg crates, waiting for their permanent home in the back yard. There, abundant weeds choke out the azaleas and sundry other plants. This despite the fact that I dumped an entire trailer-load of dirt back there last summer ON TOP of a bunch of cardboard to kill the weeds and,  more importantly, the mint. Short of a flame-thrower, though, there’s not much you can do with mint, except make a metric buttload of juleps.

Anyway, the heavens opened Saturday morning at around 6 am and apparently liked staying good and open. My deck is drenched and sad; no sunny annuals in porch boxes yet.

But I suppose it’s still early. There’s plenty of time for the world to dry out, the pollen to fill the air — and when that happens  I really, really know it’s springtime in Kentucky.

It’s a mud world

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Yesterday we here in Kentucky celebrated the 136th running of the Kentucky Derby. We also celebrated, if you can call it that, the non-stop rain which left the track muddy, the Derby hats limp and jockey Calvin Borel with his third Kentucky Derby win in four years — a new record.

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There’s Calvin on the right, living up to his nickname, “Bo-Rail,” for his affection for running his horse along the rail. It worked for him last year on Mine That Bird and in 2007 on Street Sense, when he won his first Derby as Queen Elizabeth watched from the grandstand.

“It’s the shortest way around,” he always says.

I grew up in Kentucky and I’ve never lived anywhere else, so the Derby is as ordinary to me as air. I’m not Horse People,  I’m not remotely connected to anything horsey, except by proximity, since I live in Lexington, and I’ve only been to the Derby twice. There are Kentuckians who don’t pay a whole lot of attention  to the annual horse race, which captures at least some of the world’s attention for a couple minutes on the first Saturday in May. And that’s OK too. But for me, it’s something completely ordinary to turn on the TV on Saturday afternoon on Derby Day and watch the coverage, or maybe attend a party (though I haven’t been to one in years).

But my interest stepped up a notch a couple years ago when Calvin Borel was brought to my attention. He’s from Louisiana, home state of my beloved, who falls into the group I mentioned above — they who pay only scant attention to the Run for the Roses. We were  both captivated by his self-effacing manner, his bald displays of emotion upon winning the holy grail of horseracing and his patented method for achieving the win. Now in one of those “I was country before country was cool” moments, I was a Calvin girl before Calvin was cool. I was drawn to him by the association with Tras’s homestate and well, look at him now.

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Here’s his wife getting a victory smooch and holding up three fingers for his third win … maybe it’s for the Triple Crown,  where Calvin’s headed next.

We all love a good story, and Calvin certainly is one. He’s like a cross between Rocky and Seabiscuit. Plucked from obscurity in 2007, trainer Carl Nafzger gave him his shot on Street Sense and look at him now. He owns the Derby.

See you at Pimlico for the Preakness in two weeks, Calvin. Maybe the rain will have stopped by then.