Blog here - https://americandigest.org/
Excerpt 1: https://americandigest.org/wp/in-the-kingdom-of-fema/
But once inside the dead Sears store I see that the strangeness is not the fault of FEMA at all but of those who have been appointed as line managers. They mean well but these volunteers with BULLHORNS simply haven’t done a lot of “impoverished and burned out and fried and beat down and very pissed off” line management.
Once you pass through the partition wall into the hall of FEMA everything improves as you talk with a well-trained, compassionate person who is doing all they can to make you as whole as you can be made. The FEMA process, unlike the line, is as crisp as a reasonable person can hope for. The representatives of FEMA are quick and clear and helpful and competent. For a person trained to expect disaster every time you hear “I’m from the government. I’m here to help,” FEMA in the Sears store in Chico on Saturday is a revelation. In what is almost no time I am interviewed and verified and told clearly what to do and what to expect in the way of relief. Then I am given my FEMA number, which is the key to all benefits, and sent on my way.
Downstream from the FEMA corridor are all the agencies and organizations that are officially affiliated with FEMA; among them one from the Billy Graham Ministries that will, with your permission and with you present, come to the site of where your house once stood, where your once life was, and sift the ashes of your home.
Sift. The. Ashes. Of. Your. Home.
Somewhere near the west wall of what was my bedroom is a small metal box. Inside that box is the wedding ring I wore with both my wives. It was my father’s wedding ring.
Someday soon I hope to be back at what was my home with the kind souls from the Billy Graham Ministries to watch as they sift those ashes.
And then I’ll be gone.
---------------------------------------------
From yesterday: https://americandigest.org/wp/a-fortnight-after-the-fire-yesterday-or-centuries-before//a>
It’s late in the evening on the 20th of November 2018; otherwise known as “the month that will not end.” Since the initial shock of the Camp Fire incinerating my home and my hometown, I’ve been struggling with details small, large, and life-altering. My house is burned out and for now so am I.
But all is not gloom and doom. I have, against all odds, actually secured a small apartment in Chico, a town where there are no apartments or houses to be had for love or money — unless it is a LOT of love or a LOT of money. In my case, it was the love of many here in Chico for my mother. Through what I have taken to calling “The Power of Lois” an apartment appeared on my path and I took it. What is even better is that it is located close to my mother’s apartment. This enables us to go from being “roommates” to “neighbors.”
The apartment is a tiny place (about a sixth of what my house was) but it is quite secure and recently refurbished and it will suit me down to the ground.
This forms one of the three pillars of my own personal salvation and deliverance from the fires of Paradise. The second pillar is formed of a living chain of my friends and readers whose help and support have carried me through and, in all senses of the term, returned me to life. To say I am deeply moved and grateful for all your unremitting and instantaneous aid is to barely touch my gratitude. I am a man of words and I have always been suspicious when I read “there are no words.” But all of you have made me a believer.
The third pillar has to be the continuing and mysterious grace of God.
Now it is late and I am, I confess, very, very tired. I’ve been running on empty for many days and I think I am going to have to take a break for tomorrow and for Thanksgiving and perhaps the day after. I have many notes and will have many things to say about this unmitigated catastrophe, but they will have to wait.
Farewell for a bit and God bless you all.
