Sophia Serve

Swimming with a Black Swan

Throughout the aftermath of Irene, I’ve been reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by the Lebanese author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It’s a somewhat heady take on complexity and randomness, with many economic insights, and is filled with maxims such as: “People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus.”  Or “ Do not give children dynamite sticks even if they come with a warning label.” And, “Make an omelet with the broken eggs.”

What’s a “black swan”? Something unpredictable but real (there actually are black swans, it turns out) that lies outside the realm of our regular expectations. An “outlier.”  (Take 9-11 for example.) Black swans carry an extreme impact and like Irene, we try to explain it after the fact, but we didn’t know it would occur. Black Swans carry massive consequences in their wake.

Who would have thought a tropical storm earlier masquerading as a hurricane, would hit the middle of Vermont with such vengeance? Highly Improbable! Still, that much rain can fall anywhere, any time, now that we realize (well most of use realize) that we’re in what many call not just climate change, but climate chaos.

A month later, we look at each other and say, “Now what?” Now that the flurry of volunteers with shovels have waded through, now that clothing donations pile up, now that most of the people have registered with FEMA and are waiting to hear from their insurance agencies, now that the “heroic” life saving stuff has been done, what now? Some of us have experienced community cohesion—“we were a community of strangers,” as one volunteer coordinator put it, “and now we’ve grown to know each other better,” but will it last? Empty promises pile up; the charlatans move in.  How do we deal with fatigue, disillusionment, anger and frustration?

No disaster is like any other disaster, but experts tell us it’s normal that now we’re entering into the predictable “loss of reliance and hope” phase. All those problems families used to have are compounded now if they’re living with friends and relatives who are thinking, “How much longer will this go on?”  Many people I talk to simply don’t know where they’ll be living come winter. So we’re all thinking, “What now?” Will we again become communities of strangers or have we learned an important lesson about how to rebuild? Can we vision new ways of building communities that might be sustainable?

The Black Swan author talks about the incompleteness of our knowledge and our systems that are built on ignorance. We watch, through the lenses of our hubris, and witness economies crumble around us. Politicians stick to pat answers and advocate ways forward they have always touted. And none of them seem to be working. Neither they, nor we, are willing or even able to look beneath the waters on which both the white swans and the black swans are paddling. We’re NOT in control!

Today I saw streams that leaped over their beds and carved new pathways to the ocean. Someone found one of our local propane tanks in the Long Island Sound. Flooding tentacles have a far reach. But so do stories of hope.  Black Swans will still appear—but so will all the graceful white ones.

"Sofly Gliding" from an original watercolor by Julia Blackbourn

Taleb ends his book with a reminder that the Roman teacher and writer, Seneca, always ended his essays with the word vale. It has the same root as “value” and “valor.”  It means “be strong. Be robust. Be worthy.”  Vale!

 

 

 

Together Like Never Before

In her latest book, Alone Together, the MIT technology guru, Sherry Turkle, reminds us that we’re “tethered by technology.” She describes how teens today have grown up with parents who texted with one hand and pushed their swings with another. Their parents drove them to school while talking on the phone and they sat in the back seat watching Disney videos. One college freshman told her that her father read Harry Potter to her while often on his Blackberry. They grew up with parents physically close but whose attention was always “elsewhere.”

Floods bring one’s attention up close and personal. There is no “elsewhere” when you watch raging waters climb closer and closer. Everything becomes starkly present. And it’s coming right at you!

But thanks to cell phones and Facebook pages (where there actually was cell phone access and people could power up their computers) in three short weeks, communities came together in Vermont in ways our ancestors would have appreciated and found admirable. After all, Vermont has always been the hotbed of technology innovation—visit the St. Johnsbury museum if you don’t believe me.

Many of us remember talking to Howard Dean, our former Vermont governor and presidential hopeful, about how his young staffers were creating ways to reach individuals by using the Internet. He invented the ground-up campaign. Many of these young geeks are now millionaires—and some of them recently re-entered Vermont’s flood-plains to help. As a result, my neighboring village had a website up and running within hours of the flood and the next weekend, 1000 volunteers showed up with shovels. Blogs appeared faster than you could say “help us.” One comment that I’ll never forget was from a farm family: “We need pails. We have nothing to put our milk in.”

Independent Vermonters have always known how to use their technology, from sharing skidders in the woods to blowing conch shells from their front porches to call the neighbors to a party. Many Vermonters own heavy equipment; many just built their own roads. Some neighbors in another close-by ravaged area latched extension ladders together so people could climb up and out of a canyon that had trapped them. Others cut a hole in the freeway fence so they and their neighbors could get in and out. They didn’t wait for “them,” the uniformed helpers because "they" were either elsewhere or beyond calling. With one “Irene-strength fell swoop,” Them became Us.

“We,” like the stalwart volunteers of St. Paul’s Episcopal church in White River Junction, made well over 4,000 sandwiches and put them in lunch bags to go out all over our ravaged valley so volunteers had something eat. Some bags actually had little hand sanitzers!  “We” collected clothes. “We” cooked community dinners. “We” helped each other get back and forth when there really wasn’t a “back” or a “forth” for many. “We” shared chain saws and generators. "We" organized relief fund-raisers. “We,” like the folks who latched extension ladders together to get people out of a canyon where they had become trapped, became very creative. Some local technical college kids, for instance, quickly rigged up a solar powered battery for a trapped family without power.

But most of all, we’ve learned that walking from door to door and actually talking to people, is the best way of being a good neighbor. We've learned that when, like one man in our nearby town who reached an elderly woman whose house was gone, all we need do sometimes is set up a chair and say, "Here. This is your space now. All you have to do is sit here. We'll do the rest."

Now that the realities of FEMA have dawned on most people severely affected, they know that they will need to find new ways of coping. They might have to find new ways of building in new places, that may not completely replicate their old ones.

But like Emily Dickenson’s, a bird now perches in my heart singing songs of hope. I believe our new ways of being together will be smarter and in the long run, better for our planet. Some of us have now tasted the experience of being not “alone together” but “together!” And we won’t let that go.

Rooster Resiliency

Our friend Jon Bindrum created this metal masterpiece for us. If you look closely, you may see "rooster" in various languages.  We smile every time we look out our window and when the sun catches his wonderful tail feathers, he glints--as if to say: Wake up and be happy!

Amidst all the gray silt and sadness following Irene's visit, autumn color begins to slip over our hills and into our valleys bringing with it a sense of normalcy and peace. When I walked into the local disaster center one day recently, the first thing I saw amidst FEMA flyers and hand sanitizer give-aways, was a large bouquet of brilliant zinnias. Someone knew our spirits needed reminding that color will return and we will be all right.

I posted some personal disaster account to "friends" on one of my social media outlets and have received back two comments I wish to share with you. These are from very thoughtful people who know we need to plan ahead and think beyond the present emergencies.  Here is one from Alaska:

"It is wonderful to again hear of the help offered by volunteers. It is sad to again hear of the lack of support after the headline news passes.

Here in Alaska we had serious spring flooding. However, over the past two decades we have experienced more flooding and storm damage than previously. Global warming is taking place and we can see it all around us.  While Irene is a time limited disaster form which there is then a recovery phase, what is being seen in Alaska has been called by the indigenous peoples "a slow moving disaster."  The concern being that with a disaster there can be a "declaration" and government funds are provided and assistance is offered. There is no such event for a declaration in a slow moving disaster, it just continues to slowly erode community lands, and eventually the spirits of the impacted residents.

I am glad to hear of your bands [I told him about the music happening on town greens all around us] and blossoms as your community embraces volunteers and rebuilds. You have had a loss of place but not heart. I hope you keep posting about the healing process through full recovery."

And this today from another voice speaking of resiliency...

"I am so sorry for the devastation you have experienced in your beloved homeland. Thank you for sharing your important messages with us about community, networks and preparedness. Not long ago I attended a conference on climate change where Thomas Homer Dixon told us that our ability to adapt to forthcoming change is all about developing methods of resiliency. Sustainability will no longer be a valid approach as the predictable patterns in nature we build our lives around will disappear.

I admire your courage and your ability to see the beauty amidst the pain."

So I look at my new rooster and think: resiliency. That's the key. Resilient enough to not break when we're forced to bend; resilient enough to stand up to whatever comes; resilient enough to patiently wait for that voice that will call up the sun and morning will dawn once again.

4,000 Socks (and some red underwear)

I wrote a message on the white board at the local disaster relief center the other day: "We're into abundance, not scarcity." I'm not sure who will read that or what they'll think it means--I'm not sure I know myself, although I suspect it's connected to warm socks and new underwear.

Anyone handling donated clothing right now in the Vermont flood areas knows the feeling.  “Here comes another bag full. Where are we going to put it? Who’s going to sort it?”

Everyone means well, but the disaster relief center I’m most familiar with has now limited their intake to “New underwear, new socks, towels, bedding.”  I’m sure jackets and warm winter wear will be also accepted…but no more big bags of those discarded jeans and tops and kids' clothes everyone seems to suddenly want to part with.

One woman who lost their house had time to grab a few things from their closets. But the other day, she actually come in with a bag or two, saying, “I really don’t need this much anymore.”  Having to leave everything behind makes you suddenly realize how much in our lives really is superfluous. We don't need many socks, but we need some socks.

The other day, I spoke to my friend Mickie who used to work for the Cabot Hosiery Mills in Northfield, Vermont about the need for new socks and guess what? She made one call and her former company generously donated 4,000 pairs of socks to the Vermont Food Bank. Soon Mickie’s socks will be dancing all over the state. Now that’s something      to celebrate!               

Another friend who faithfully reads my blogs and shares them with her friends from Boston said, “Karen I’m going out to buy some new women’s underwear for your clothing relief center. Some will be red because when our women went to Haiti after the earthquake, someone had said, “When you wearin' red underwear, things can’t be too bad.”

I can't wait to get them and start giving them out--to selected women.    

I'd have rushed out to buy some myself but our local Penny's, my favorite underwear and sock store, is now closed due to flooding. They have no plans to reopen.

Oh, the Flood Stories!

Everyone has one. Or more.

Since raising my hand and becoming involved with coordinating volunteer donations and efforts in our post-Irene central Vermont White River Valley, stories have been piling up in my overburdened brain. In between emails and phone calls, I grab my iPAD and read Ann Patchett’s wonderful little book about writing. In The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life, she says, “Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.”  That’s what I face daily. How can I possibly describe in my weak and disappointing words the stories I’m hearing.

“I think the beach the river left around my property is beautiful. All that sand!”  Right. Until you discover how toxic that sand/river silt is. Hasn’t she heard about all the propane tanks broken loose and spilling into our rivers? And all the topsoil Irene ruined?

“It’s safe to drink the water,” says one local small town’s manager in the town where I’ve done some phone answering as a volunteer. But I know better from people’s stories. Take the woman who said, “No way! Even if you boil it there’s scummy stuff floating on it.”  Or the man leaning on the doorway, obviously totally exhausted, saying, “Our water smells like gasoline—even when I boil it.” And then later a FEMA guy with some chemistry background reacted to that account by saying, “Get the EPA here now! That water contains (followed by a lot of four syllable chemical terms totally new to me!) and boiling makes it worse—it could explode.” However, I think the EPA's busy--and underfunded. Or maybe cut altogether by now. This guy has to solve this on his own.

I heard another heartbreaker while volunteering in the local food pantry the other day:  “I need bottled water.” We’ve got a lot of it—help yourself, I tell her as I volunteer to play Grandma while she shops.

“My baby had very bad diarrhea until I started making her formula with bottled water.”  “We’ve got lots of water for you. Please use it—for everyone in your family.” The Red Cross has delivered mountains of water (not to mention all the other federal sources of water lately) but getting it to where the baby’s formula is being made is a whole other challenge, given that many are trapped in unpassable roads. Nor do people want to leave what little they have left to get out to see what’s available to them. Thankfully we haven’t heard about much looting, but lots of people are taking pictures! Also, we live in a very independent culture where few care to ask for help. Oh, just so you know. I saw the baby, smiling and happy several days later.

One of my favorite stories appeared just yesterday: “Karen, my neighbor needs a yurt-he can use what’s left of his house if he dries out the lumber over the winter to rebuild, but he wants to live on site.”  Ever tried to find a used yurt? I did hear about one from a friend who knows the area very well and he told me “But it’s gone now.” Then last night a young woman told me about a group of great teenagers from our nearby Sharon Academy who are headed to Maine next weekend to learn how to build yurts. They’ll bring back their knowledge and muscle to help. Problem potentially solved.

But we continue to scour the area for temporary places for people to live. We know there are vacation homes all around and we know people are eager to help, but coordinating all that seems to be beyond anyone’s expertise, time or energy right now.

During the hot weather following the flood, a friend of mine had to abandon her car, walk several miles, and became very dehydrated. She spent the day with an IV hookup in one of the truly wonderful makeshift clinics that sprang up immediately (thanks to area hospitals and medical disaster experts.) She’s in Massachusetts now wondering how to get her car back.

“Can you get our volunteers and road crews Gatorade? All people have is water to drink—that’s great, but they’re getting sick of it.” "Can you get us some juice?"

Fortunately we have a system in place through our Episcopal churches in Vermont and the “angels” in White River Junction can fill our requests as fast as we can send them.  My learning curve on what people really need (gas cards!! or even a car!) and what will be nice to have later (furniture when they have a place to put it) has spiked this week.

This morning I got an e mail asking for water testing kits!

I’d heard from my new “best friends” at a huge Feed Supply outlet that those kits which are usually just given out, are in very short supply. So I wrote to my new contact at Dartmouth Medical who immediately wrote back, “Where do you get water testing kits? To which I responded. “Beats me. Do you know any chemists? Or plumbers?” She wrote back: “Okey dokey.” And I suspect, knowing Mary as little as I do, I’ll hear of some water testing kits coming our way soon. Towns that even have health officers might not have them.

The stories just keep piling up. Some don’t actually shatter my heart. I’ll leave you with two. A friend still stuck on Stony Brook Road, the worst road in Stockbridge, is one of the few who has internet access. So every day he prints out the latest news/town directives and posts them on his barn for neighbors to read as they walk by.  A 90 year old woman needed medical attention so the neighbors put her in a sidecar of an ATV and bounced her several miles to their town green for a helicopter to medivac her to the closest hospital. She was heard to say, “I’ve never had so much fun in my entire life.” 

I hold her close to my “living beauty of imagination.”  Just as I hold Gabriel who had to leave his lost pet bunny when the family ran to safety in Bethel. After the flood, they pushed the kitchen door open and there was Gabriel’s bunny perched on the topmost kitchen counter. Who knew bunnies had such faith? Or that they could swim to safety? I later tearfully watched as Gabriel’s house was hauled away. But I smile when I remember his bunny.

 

MRE's and a Hundred Pounds of Cole Slaw

Having no military training, I never thought I’d be holding a flat brown cardboard box of Meals Ready to Eat. But here it is: “Chicken Pulled with Buffalo Style Sauce.” Packed in South Carolina, it weighs 8 oz and the grey-green plastic packet is filled with something that looks a lot like what I’d get if I put celery through a blender with about a cup of water—thinner than baby food consistency. I can't vouch for how it tastes because there's no way I'd actually open it. I read the standard instructions, thinking they don’t apply since this one is just goo, but at the bottom of the slim cardboard  it says: “Eat some of each component to get a balance of nutrients. Eat the high carbohydrate items first. Save the dry snack items to eat when you’re on the move.”

That’s what many people who were stranded in several of the villages around us after Irene slammed into central Vermont, ate...MRE’s and water flown in by helicopter.  When a network of us from the Episcopal churches around Vermont started finding out who to contact (once the phones were operable) we learned: “Yes! They could use lunches for their volunteers.  Could they please get some Gatorade, too, "because everyone’s a little sick of just water.” (There were so many stacks of bottled water around that one woman said, “We could create another flood with it.”)

But that’s good because you can’t drink the water in Bethel, our nearest village. Even boiling it creates white film on top. Still, some people haven’t gotten that word and we’re now hearing of families who are getting sick. Organization and communication varies a great deal, town by town. Unfortunately, in places, people's “needs assessments” are secondary to “road repairs” and traffic control at the moment--or Fema registrations.

I have a friend in one town over the mountain who prints out daily e-mails from the town and posts them on his barn. People on his isolated road, walk by and read. Trying to keep our good humor alive, he also told me of one of his neighbors, a 90 year old woman who needed medical attention. Stuffed into a side-car of an  ATV, hauled to the village green and into a helicopter, she was heard to say, “This is the most fun I’ve had in my entire life!”

But it’s far from fun for most of the people I talk to. Volunteers who are so tired, they are ready to drop. Volunteers frustrated and angry over inadequate town planning.  Crystal from Bethel, for instance, who single-handedly has stacked up in the town hall, donated clothes by size over what must be about a hundred tables. She neatly stacks bedding on the stage floor. "We have a lot of donations here, but we need new socks and new underswear." She has a few new boots but they only go up to size seven.

Volunteers also need gas cards, because they’re driving around so much and it’s becoming very expensive. There are no laundry facilities for flood victims—a load of laundry at the local Laundromat costs $4.25 and they have no money. But even if we arranged to provide money for it, laundromats around are now saying—“No Flood Clothes.” It gums up their machines. So people are told, you really have to throw your old clothes away.

But it's the food that has kept up hopping this week. Communitiy dinners. Food shelves. On Labor Day, we moblized our forces and sent hundreds of sack lunches, delivered by a few brave drivers, up over the mountain. They wended their way past heavy road equpment--some from Maine, Kansas, and South Carolina. Sack lunches became our road tolls. "OK we'll let you through, even though the road is closed, if you care to give our workers lunches. They work all day without stopping."

Yesterday we handed out lunches with fresh fruit to some National Guard guys working on a bridge. (Vermont is a land of streams, and about 90 bridges have been destroyed.) The bridge workers didn't have to rely on their MRE's and were very grateful.

We've been filtering requests such as "We really need soy-based baby formula for two of our families." Or "We could use salt and pepper, matches, cooking oil, vinegar."  "A man needs size 12 boots--he has no shoes.) I realize the first wave of supplies that hit a disaster village are bleach, rubber gloves, heavy duty contracter bags for debris, masks. Then it's all the "other stuff." Look around your house, especially your kitchen and imagine it all gone.

I call my source in White River Junction at St. Paul's Episcopal Church and she says, "Done!" She and her team of angels get it to us and it's in our next "Over the Mountain Relay." And they' are doing this for many other flood-stricken towns as well.

Yesterday on a run for some school supplies, and a few new socks and underwear for Crystal, I stopped by the school to speak with the secretary there. Unlike some other trapped villages, they can offer their kids lunch, but when I mentioned that my White River Angel had 100 pounds of cole slaw she was looking to give somebody, she said, "Oh yes! I know our school cook could use that."

Who ever would have guessed that in Vermont, land of organic vegetables (many fields now silted over and ruined for years by polluted river) and largesse, we would be reduced to MRE’s and Gatorade or water or gifted PB and J sandwiches? Or for one of our neighbors to have a toothbrush, but no toothpaste. Or to simply ask for a hairbrush.

It’s a world I never thought I’d be a part of. But here we are. All of us. We're learning up close and personal what's truly important.

I rely, now, on words such as as Andrew Harvey has written in his book  The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism “We are supported by networks of grace…this limitless wine of grace is pouring down incessantly, in and through every event, through pain as well as joy…through ordeal as well as happiness, terror as well as calm.”

Amen to that.