Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Houston Rain Event: Memorial Day (2015)

Memorial Day Rain Event, Houston Texas (2015)

(Houston) On my daughter’s 14th birthday, May 25, 2015 she celebrated by shopping, seeing a movie at the River Oaks Theatre, and eating dinner w/ her best buddy Elizabeth. My son attended another birthday party in Fort Bend County on Monday night, and we waited for him to return home around 10p.m., just as the storms intensified.

Finally, our team congregated all under one roof; while many weren’t so lucky. The storms were fierce, the lightning struck often, and the thunder shook the house. The Rockets hung on to win Game 4 of the Western Conf. finals; however thousands of cars were stranded in downtown while the waters rose up and out of Houston’s bayous.

Our family huddled high in our tree house; Hampton watching the wx-radar on his iPad and Eliza squealing every time the lightning illuminated the room. She loves a good storm the way some people love horror stories! Towards midnight the waters rose all over the city. Over 10-inches of rain fell in west Houston, and the Braes Bayou watershed that meanders through the Medical Center peaked higher than two other major rain events: Hurricane Ike (2008) and Tropical Storm Allison, 15-years ago.

Buffalo Bayou Flood Stage

This major storm raged, but our little family unit watched it from the safety of the Master bedroom. Rain fell in sheets and the street outside our house turned into a river, carrying away the trash receptacles waiting for tomorrow’s pickup. Daddy bravely retrieved them from the intersection a block away; but he returned soaked and scared at the power of the rising water.

Just one mile away, Buffalo Bayou rose up an over the banks trapping many in their cars. We lost power for a while, but sitting together in the dark wasn’t so bad since we had the togetherness to keep us courageous. We talked about the way the bayou rose quickly at our old house in Linkwood, and we remembered fondly the night Eliza came into the world, 14-years ago.

We are a close family and we know deep in our hearts that we can survive anything together; this proved itself to be true many times over the years. God’s power is immense, but we also see his love in our union. We woke to a flooded city, HISD cancelled school, and Daddy didn’t go into work until afternoon. Hamp was still asleep; but he rested peacefully. We don’t know when the flood waters will recede, but we know how tightly we held to each other on this historic night.

Downtown Dry



Saturday, May 9, 2015

Fiction about The Fall: Ripped from the Headlines, 7.9 Kathmandu Super Earthquake

“I came to a place where every light is muted, which bellows like the sea beneath a tempest. The hellish hurricane, which never rests, drives on the spirits with its violence: wheeling and pounding, it harasses them. When they come up against the ruined slope, there are cries and wailing and lament, and there they curse the forces of the divine.” Inferno, Canto V (Dante)
(Nepal, April 28)
In Kathmandu you hold your breath when the mountain shakes.
 
We were rolled up tight as a cocoon; staying warm, huddled in a group on the side of Everest; where the temperature never exceeds zero centigrade.

Photo from AP

The weather was calm in the early dawn; yet my tent was still slightly visible, colored brightly orange like a road cone. Ready for the next stage of climbing, maybe one more full day; the caravan zig-zagged, reaching for the top of the world’s most prestigious mountain, but staging this evening just below the summit at a camp called, “Khumbu Icefall.”

This expedition was made of a diverse band of new and experienced climbers, and numerous, ever-present Nepalese Sherpas: part pack-mule, part ghostly guide, slowly leading us by taking the burden and responsibility of “feeling” the mountain. Only those with an indigenous attachment to Everest had the sensitivity to divine what the sounds, smells, shadows, and winds spoke to those daring enough to confront its harsh conditions. Costing over $30,000 to join an expedition, one of the more unusual reasons to climb was attending the wedding of Nepalese couple Moni Mule Pati and Pem Dorjeee, Sherpas on the mountain in 2004.

Copyright of Berta Tilmantaite (2015)

Everest is not the world’s tallest mountain but that’s like saying the Kentucky Derby isn’t the world’s only horse race. Those who argue that it is the highest mountain in the world put its height at 29,035 feet, about the altitude of a cruising commercial jet. The ultimate prize of every climber, it's as if reaching the summit allowed you to wear a coveted green jacket. Sticking out of the Himalayas, stretching 1,500 miles along the border of Nepal and China; in 2014, an avalanche killed 16 guides, so far, the greatest tragedy ever seen on Everest. Hundreds sleep on the mountain forever, their frozen graves permanently affixed to the mountainside; however, since 1953, more than 2,000 people have successfully climbed to the peak.

If the earth suddenly rips apart by 3 feet, how does it make a sound as if an old man belched?

The sudden jarring shift ripped away the tent from its anchor spikes, earth turning to jelly; but it was the high, rumbling roar, the sound of fury and death raining down from above, which was horrific. The shaking quickly subsided even though the actual earthquake lasted more than 90 seconds. The oncoming thunder of the falling snow resounded with intensity for a short time; before it hollered down from a rolling wave like a hundred thousand head of cattle driving across the dry plains of Texas.


Whether rolling or falling, the descent depressurized and disoriented the climbers, the floor dropping from under them in an instant. Plummeting over 1,000 feet in 5 seconds, confined in millions of tons of hard packed snow; the most immediate threats were suffocation, wounds, and hypothermia. Tumbling over and over in a clothes-dryer motion; the chances that any of them would survive the somersaulting plunge were as unknown as a bouncing lottery ball.
 
The terror stopped like a pause button. After minutes that seemed like an eternity; the booming, roaring, violent cacophony of the Fall ended with a soft thud. I was like a hot-dog stuffed inside a moist, pallid bun. During the twisted, rambling, hellish descent down the mountain, in what could have been a meat-grinder; my limber body was intact. I laid wrapped in nylon and snow, still in silence, making inventory of my limbs with my nerve endings; waiting for the scream of pain, as the score.


I’ve felt alone before. The everyday worker, husband, student, or octogenarian can understand that sometimes the overwhelming isolation of the human condition causes one to feel shut-in, forced into confinement even if it is not physical restraint. The vacuum quiet of mind-numbing pain, the racing heartbeat of anxiety, fear, and dread, swallowed him whole; it reminded him of old school days, when the heat rash of embarrassment flushed through his skin: “Proceed to the Principal’s office young man; and do it now!”

“Sir, you need to turn around and put your hands behind your back…” If you can relate to that sort of disorienting confusion, if you’ve ever felt so deserted, distressed, and shocked that you wanted to close your eyes and wish it all away; then you can understand a little of what it was like to settle into a hole, interned at the bottom of an Avalanche. What is going to happen next; will I live or die?

#Fiction ©(2015)Mark H. Pillsbury


As you consider Nepal, please consider supporting these relief agencies as they strive to help the real victims of this earthquake still suffering:

UNICEF  The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, says nearly 1 million children in Nepal need help. UNICEF says it is preparing two cargo flights with a combined 120 tons of humanitarian supplies including medical and hospital supplies, tents and blankets, for urgent airlift to Kathmandu.
Online: http://www.supportunicef.org

World Food Program
The U.N. World Food Program says logistics and emergency response teams have arrived in Kathmandu.
Online: https://give.wfp.org

Red Cross
The International Committee for the Red Cross says it is working with the Nepal Red Cross Society and has a team working on emergency response.
Online: http://familylinks.icrc.org

Save the Children
Save the Children says it has staff in 63 districts and emergency kits, hygiene materials and tarpaulins already in Nepal and ready for distribution. Additional supplies and emergency recovery teams are being flown in.
Online: https://secure.savethechildren.org

Oxfam
Oxfam says its team in Nepal is assessing needs and it is sending emergency food, water and sanitation supplies. “Communication is currently very difficult. Telephone lines are down and the electricity has been cut off making charging mobile phones difficult. The water is also cut off,” country director Cecilia Keizer says in a statement.
Online: https://secure2.oxfamamerica.org

Doctors Without Borders
Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, says it is sending medical staff and supplies to Nepal, including emergency surgical teams.
Online: https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org

Samaritan's Purse
The Christian aid organization has deployed a disaster relief team and initial supplies for 15,000 households to support partner hospitals.
Online: http://www.samaritanspurse.org

Friday, May 1, 2015

Poetry: Pray for Nepal

Swirling, smoking plumes rise heavenward:  thousands of billowing pyres burn with bodies and straw;

People crushed, both alive and dead, carry on a tradition all over Nepal.

By the will of the gods, dark turmeric smoke is life’s breath to the wind,

As is its nature, the body returns to the sky, a gift that its family sends.

The heaving ground broke open their souls, leaving gaping holes deep and black,

Unnerved, unprepared, enveloped by chaos; this poor country was caught by surprise attack.

As history flows from the Bagmati into the Ganges; Nepal’s tragedy washes into Bengal’s yellow bay; life’s shraddha (inheritance) is more than what is evident today.

Blessed are the meek, the survivors of this disaster; their only hope is that relief arrives faster.

How can they inherit an earth that so quickly and violently destroyed their nation?

My thoughts put to poetry don’t help the situation; but what can I do for Kathmandu?

All I can do is #pray4Nepal

©Mark H. Pillsbury (Houston)

["A poem... begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words..." (Robert Frost, 1916)]