open letter to my neighbors

hey, neighbors!

i like what you've done with the place. and your weekend parties look awesome when i go by and i don't mind having all those cars on the road because you all look like you're having a pantload of fun.

i think it's super cool that you have a live band and i actually enjoy your practices and i enjoy it when just the drummer practices even though it's plenty loud here at my house, across the road and back a ways.

i even like the idea that when your band is between sets you let the children play with your drums.

but you cross the line when you DON'T TURN OFF THE SOUND SYSTEM between sets. i don't mind hearing your party, or your practices even though it's quite loud even with my windows closed.

i DO mind open mike for six-year-olds.

for the sake of all things kind and decent, when you let the children play with the equipment, KILL THE AMP.

those four kids who want to sing into the mike wouldn't be enjoyable for us out here even if they knew more songs than the first two bars of the star spangled banner, repeated over and over and over while that kid on the drums plays bah-bah BOOM, bah, bah BOOM uninterrupted for ten minutes.

so please. just KILL THE POWER BETWEEN SETS.

PLEASE.

prybar

last week i went into waterbury to work on flood cleanup.

it's good to see how many people are coming to shovel muck and strip carpets and whatever work needs doing just "because we're neighbors", with "neighbor" apparently a word that means "you live in my state".

i didn't take any pictures and there's not much to tell you about except that pretty typical of it was a bunch of us in a room of a destroyed trailer in a trailer park. there are five of us in that room, and we are trying to scoop up the mess and maybe save out a few personal items that aren't destroyed. so two people are scooping, one is boxing, one is gently removing keepsakes from a waterlogged wall, and one is using a chainsaw to cut up the furniture.

later in the day we are leaving big pieces of things that don't go around corners easily "until we knock out the drywall".

it's hard work, and i had never done demolition, but a worker is a worker and they take everyone and now i'm pretty good with a prybar and a mat knife.

yesterday at church our pastor got up and said she hoped we'd forgive her for not having prepared a sermon; she had been cleaning up in moretown.   and then she turned to us and asked what we did this week.

and i am so proud to have been in that room, a church where we were not flooded, but where nearly every person had either gone to work on cleanup, or rounded up supplies or raised money or in some way had worked support.

a little girl in the second row was making cookies to feed the volunteers.

last night there was more flooding. not as widespread, but there was still flooding.

today it's raining.